Business

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, as the House knows, from time to time there have been complaints from all sides about the House not rising at the time indicated, for example, 7.30 p.m. on Thursdays. I can apprise noble Lords that were all Back-Bench speeches to be limited to seven minutes the House would be able to rise at 7.30. I also remind noble Lords that when the number seven appears on the clock, it indicates the end of the seven minutes.

Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Wednesday last by the Lord Ashley of Stoke, as amended on Tuesday—namely, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows—
	"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament, but regret the decision of Your Majesty's Government to abandon the search for cross-party consensus on constitutional reform and to launch unilateral proposals for changes to this House that could gravely weaken the House; and call on Your Majesty's Government to respect the formal undertakings given to this House, to withdraw their current proposals and to undertake meaningful consultation with Parliament and the senior judiciary before proceeding with legislation."

Lord Rooker: My Lords, last Wednesday, the Prime Minister set out the Government's strategy for legislation and reform. Today I shall focus in particular on the planned legislation. The programme for this Session will enhance economic stability, further reform and improve public services, and create a fairer, more secure and more just society. I shall delineate some of the issues relating to about half a dozen of the Bills that will come before your Lordships' House.
	The fire and rescue services Bill, which will be introduced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, will be the first substantial piece of legislation to modernise the fire service for 50 years. It will reflect the White Paper published in June and the findings of Sir George Bain's independent review of the fire service. We believe that the Bill will create a service better able to protect the public and to respond to changing demands. The Bill will create a new duty for fire and rescue authorities to respond to serious civil emergencies, ranging from flooding to terrorist incidents. It will also create a duty to promote fire safety, recognising the role that fire-fighters have long played in preventing as well as fighting fires.
	The Government will shortly publish a new national framework for consultation which will provide the clear, strategic direction that the service requires. Within that framework, the fire and rescue authorities will have greater flexibility to set priorities locally, and will work together at a regional level.
	Last Session the Government introduced a draft Housing Bill. It has been consulted on and considered by various Select Committees. The Bill will be introduced for consideration this Session. It will help to create a fairer and better housing market and to protect the most vulnerable tenants, particularly in the private rented sector. Many of the most vulnerable in our society live in poor private sector accommodation. The Bill will give local authorities new powers to license selectively private landlords where there is a particular problem such as anti-social behaviour. Houses in multiple occupation represent some of our worst properties; they are often badly managed and in a poor physical condition. Therefore, we intend to fulfil a manifesto commitment—a double manifesto commitment because I believe that it was in the manifesto of 1997—to introduce a licensing scheme for the highest risk houses in multiple occupation.
	The Housing Bill will also continue the modernisation of the right-to-buy scheme, tackling abuses and reducing profiteering. We have added to the provisions already contained in the draft Bill to continue this process. So the Bill has changed since it was introduced in draft form. That responds in some way to the recommendations made by the Select Committee in the other place and the Home Ownership Task Force. It is our duty to ensure that we get value for money and high standards from funding for new affordable housing. The Bill provides for the Housing Corporation and the National Assembly for Wales to pay grant to organisations other than registered social landlords.
	There is plenty of evidence to show that nine out of 10 people are very unhappy with the process of buying and selling a home. Therefore, we intend to make provision for the introduction of home information packs. Research so far indicates that making key information available right at the start of the process will make home buying and selling easier, more transparent and more successful. Currently we are discussing with consumer and industry stakeholders the possibility of a phased introduction of home information packs as part of a national rollout.
	We shall also consider the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. The delivery of new housing and sustainable communities will require a flexible and quick planning system, as set out in the Green Paper in 2001. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is part of a wider strategy to reform the planning system. We believe that it will help to make the system fairer, faster and far more predictable for all concerned. The Bill will bring, clarity, certainty and a new sense of strategic direction to the planning system. It will support and speed up investment in major infrastructure and regeneration. Most importantly, the Bill will put sustainable development at the heart of the system of regional and local plans. As part of that, the Bill will strengthen community involvement and the opportunity for local people to make their views known and to have their say on the future of where they live.
	We intend that the Bill will also include changes to Section 106 dealing with planning gain. At present it is a complex and slow process. Sometimes it takes longer to negotiate than the planning permission itself. The proposals for that change were set out in the consultation document that we published on 6th November. I freely admit that these proposals will be before Parliament before the close of the formal consultation.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, that is a shame.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, that is a great shame, as the noble Baroness says, but nevertheless in a sense this Bill is unique. It has been carried over from one Session to another so that it can receive proper scrutiny from both Houses of Parliament. Indeed, it has not finished its process in another place. Next week it will receive its Report stage and Third Reading and will come to your Lordships' House early in the New Year when we can debate it and add our scrutiny to the massive amount that it has already received in the other place, having been recommitted back to a Standing Committee following the Summer Recess.
	The Government will also in due course introduce a higher education Bill, setting out the strategy for the future of higher education to ensure that the country's deserved reputation for excellence and equality of opportunity is secured for the future. The Bill is a vital tool to achieve this strategy. It will permit higher education institutions that commit to protecting the needs of disadvantaged students the freedom to set fees of up to £3,000. That will ensure a new stream of assured investment under their own control, greater financial autonomy and the opportunity to compete more effectively both within the UK and internationally.
	The higher education sector has many institutions committed to widening participation from all sectors of society. The Bill will build on this solid foundation and ensure that progress continues by creating a director of fair access. The director will be charged with ensuring that institutions that take advantage of the freedom to charge higher fees also make greater efforts to encourage participation in higher education by people from non-traditional backgrounds. The Bill will also enable the creation of a new arts and humanities research council, which will put funding for arts and humanities on the same footing as funding for science and technology.
	I discussed some of these issues with colleagues in the other place in the Tearoom earlier this morning. The big issue down in the other place is variable fees. I took the opportunity to remind some of them to go and talk to Open University and part-time students or students in further education. They all know about variable fees. It is not a question of inventing the wheel. So we must not get hung up on the wrong issue.
	We will also introduce a children's Bill. Consultation finished earlier this week on the Green Paper entitled Every Child Matters which sets out proposals for helping every child to achieve his or her potential. Much of the change set out in the Green Paper of course is not about legislation. The most important challenge will be to bring about a shared culture in services; so that those working with children, young people and their families do not see themselves as being simply concerned with one narrow aspect of a child's or a family's needs. An important part of getting better outcomes for children is to make sure that services are designed around the needs of children and young people.
	The Bill will establish a children's commissioner to develop ways of understanding young people's views and feed them in effectively at local and national level. Legislation needs to clarify accountability for children's services, to meet some of the challenges set out so clearly in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie.
	However, the issue is not just about children at risk. To meet our aim of improving outcomes for all children we need to target them earlier and more effectively to prevent any problems accumulating. That means bringing together the planning, commissioning and delivery of all services that affect the lives of children, young people and their families. It will largely be left to local discretion, but legislation will set some important building blocks in place. We shall strengthen arrangements for child protection by making local safeguarding children's boards statutory bodies, and ensure that all local authorities put in place a director of children's services and lead member for children and young people. These will be backed up by the new duties to ensure co-operation and that all agencies have a responsibility to promote the welfare of children and young people.
	The Bill will support the practical aspects of joint working by seeking to remove legislative barriers to information sharing. That was another problem highlighted in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. It will also support an integrated inspection framework to assess how well services work together to improve outcomes for children.
	There will also be a draft school transport Bill for consideration. Although I cannot say when, this will be published during this Session in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government believe that children should be able to travel to school on foot, by bicycle or—if they live too far to walk or cycle—on the bus, wherever it is safe to do so.
	The school transport Bill will ask local education authorities to trial new approaches to school transport intended to cut car use on the school run. It will disapply the existing school transport legislation in six to 12 areas in England, allowing up to 20 local education authorities to establish new models of school transport provision. We believe that the Bill will demonstrate our commitment to sustainable travel, our confidence that local education authorities have the capacity to design local schemes meeting the needs of local communities, and our determination to modernise public services.
	There will also be a traffic management Bill for consideration. Congestion is a source of frustration. As we all know, it makes journeys slow and completely unreliable in some cases. The Bill will enable roads to be managed in the interests of road users. It will allow us to deal with the causes of delays and congestion and hopefully to make better use of road space. Therefore, we hope we shall be able to reduce the problems that delay journeys. It will enable the Highways Agency to patrol roads and deal quickly with incidents; and local authorities will appoint traffic managers whose role is to keep traffic flowing.
	We have already put in place a substantial policy framework to address challenges to our environment at home and internationally. We are well on the way to meeting our Kyoto and national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is no doubt about it: rural and urban air quality is improving and rivers and bathing waters are cleaner than ever. We are well placed significantly to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. The recent reforms of the common agricultural policy mark a breakthrough in our efforts to align agriculture with greater protection and enhancement of the environment.
	There are three priority areas for environmental protection over the coming year. We shall rigorously follow up the Energy White Paper to address the threat of climate change. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming continues to be among our greatest challenges. We will continue to protect our natural environment and resource base, addressing important issues such as diffuse pollution from agriculture. We will build on the framework published earlier this year on sustainable consumption and production. That has the potential for significant economic savings from greater resource productivity and to lead ultimately to a break in the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation.
	The Government are committed to a strong rural policy. I know that there is strong debate about that in the other place, but there are far more Members representing rural constituencies on the Labour Benches in the Commons than on the other Benches. Much has been achieved so far. More than 200 of the 261 commitments in the rural White Paper have been achieved or are ongoing.
	We are ensuring equitable access to public services for everyone in rural areas, which we know is a key challenge to all concerned. We need to concentrate resources on disadvantage wherever it appears, and that is a key element of our rural strategy.
	The recently published Rural Delivery Review conducted by my noble friend Lord Haskins presents a compelling analysis of the present rural delivery landscape as confusing and too bureaucratic and centralised to meet future challenges. We have welcomed the report and already made a start on reviewing rural funding streams. Much work will be required to take the proposals forward as a whole and the Government will publish a practical implementation plan next spring.
	However, organisational reform is not an end in itself; it is a means to deliver improvements on the ground for business, farmers and wider rural communities. It is also about devolving decision-making from the centre to the localities and empowering those at that level. Equally, it is about ensuring continued independent policy advice to government on important issues such as biodiversity and rural concerns. Our approach to implementation, in partnership with all concerned, will preserve and strengthen that aspect.
	We will set out in much more detail how we intend to meet that task when, early next year, we publish a refreshed rural strategy and our detailed plan for taking forward the Rural Delivery Review.
	The legislation and our wider programme in this area of the gracious Speech is intended to create sustainable communities, improve our education provision and transport services and maintain our constant vigilance on the rural agenda by rural-proofing all legislation that issues from Whitehall. Every department is still accountable to the Minister for rural affairs and the independent bodies to ensure that we have covered all the points that have been drawn to our attention. That represents a comprehensive and powerful agenda for change, backed by significant resources.
	I do not intend to repeat the summary of the Bills; we will have plenty of time to discuss them. I commend the Bills and the package to the House.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for outlining the Bills relating to today's debate, which were announced in the gracious Speech. As a significant number have emanated from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, it has fallen to him to open the debate on behalf of the Government and for me to respond now on behalf of the main Opposition.
	I disclaim at the outset any responsibility for dealing with any matters concerning education, which will be addressed by my noble friend Lady Blatch when she winds up the debate for this side. That will include any comments on the children's Bill and the school transport Bill, with which I shall not deal. My noble friend Lady Byford will in her inestimable way speak on rural affairs and some other matters.
	I have entered a vow of silence on education, except in one regard. We did not have an opportunity to debate the local government finance settlement in this place, owing to other important business. Had we been able to do so, I should have wanted to probe the Government on their massive ring-fencing of education grant—for the instruction by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills that all grant should be passported through to schools is just that: ring-fencing, something that the Government have always said that they will reduce, but have not in this instance. Education authorities have no option but to give that part of the grant settlement directly to schools—even if, in some cases, it amounts to the totality of the grant that they receive in support of all services. For at least 12 councils, that is the reality.
	The absurdity of that situation is that what cannot come from the block grant must come from the council tax payers. If a substantial part—or, indeed, all—of the grant is already circumscribed by government diktat, the local authority has no alternative but to raise its council tax to pay for all its other requirements. I should have liked to ask the Minister whether the threat made by the Minister for local government to cap councils whose council tax increases are above an as yet unquantified percentage was intended to be implemented before or after the amount of the grant passported. For, as can be seen, some councils will have to raise all their required additional resource from the council tax payer.
	My determination to raise that now has been reinforced by the report of the Audit Commission published today, which has finally blown the Government's fig-leaf cover that local authorities alone are responsible for large rises in council tax by confirming what anyone involved in local government—especially in the south-east—would have told them for nothing: that it is the Government who bear responsibility for those rises because of how they have shifted resources from the councils in the south of England to those in the north.
	The commission points out the blindingly obvious: that large tax rises equate to low grant and lower rises to higher grant. It points out that it is government priorities, such as education, increases in National Insurance contributions, expenditure on highways and services to the elderly, which, however necessary and meritorious they are, have broken the camel's back. Against that background, it believes that the Government's proposals to return to capping cannot be supported.
	The report bears out all local authorities' assertions about the Government's propensity to fiddle the grant and lay extra expenditure burdens on local authorities which, because of the gearing, are never truly compensated for by grant. If such addition to expenditure is justified, local authorities should not be excoriated and penalised by Ministers. No doubt we will return to that report, but for now the Minister, when winding up the debate, should come clean and admit that the ring-fencing of education grant will add—indeed, as this is the second year it has happened, it has already added—to local authorities' pressures and lead to significant increases in council tax.
	I shall tread no further on my noble friend's territory, but now address the future programme. As the Minister said, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill has barely emerged from its scrutiny in the other place. It has limped along in an extraordinarily protracted way since its first introduction there, early this year, ending in its being recommitted to Standing Committee in October.
	The ink is not yet dry on the latest provisions to be included in it, to which the Minister alluded; namely, those relating to the proposed changes to Section 106 of the main Act to allow for tariffs to meet developers' planning obligations and the new requirements for Crown Estate to seek planning permission for any of its developments. Both those areas will require careful attention. There are inherent dangers in the first proposal that insufficient resources will be recouped by local authorities to provide for the community benefits for which they are intended. In the case of the second, there is a potential under the legislative provisions for many Crown Estate applications, because they are of significant size, to be referred directly to the Secretary of State for determination—thus defeating the objective of having approval given at a local level by taking to the centre the decision-making process.
	We remain concerned about the plans for regionalising development plans, the relevance of regional spatial plans and their relationship to local framework and development plans—particularly in London, where the draft London plan is not in the form of a statutory development plan. We are also concerned about the role of county councils—or their lack of role—through statutory involvement in the preparation of regional spatial strategies. That is particularly important, as those strategies will encompass many areas over which county councils currently deliver services. Over 80 per cent of local government services are carried out by county councils. They bring together transport, education, housing, health and employment, which are enormously important areas of local government responsibility.
	We are also concerned about the undermining of elected representatives in the determination of applications, with the insistence that 90 per cent of applications be devolved to officers. That is an extremely important area. Electors expect their representatives to have a major role in planning. Already about 80 per cent of applications are devolved, but those remaining are contentious and need the overview of elected representatives. We need to look at the issue clearly. As the Minister said, we will have an opportunity to begin those discussions early in the new year. My noble friend Lord Hanningfield did not expect to have to be present today, because of the change of Minister, and apologises for his absence. He and I look forward to the forthcoming debates.
	We also look forward to the consideration of the draft housing Bill, the new fire Bill and any other Bill that arises from the Deputy Prime Minister's Pandora's Box of tricks, including the civil contingencies Bill, which will cross many departmental responsibilities. Although we will not be responsible for dealing with that Bill, we will take considerable interest in it because of its potential impact on local government.
	The draft housing Bill has been around for some time, but it will now include proposals for the licensing of houses in multiple occupation, with which we have sympathy, and for sellers' packs, with which we do not. The latter proposals have found their way back into legislation, having been decoupled from the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 because they were so controversial, and they would have sunk that Act if they had been proceeded with. They are no less controversial now and are opposed by nearly every professional organisation, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors—ironically, the one profession that would benefit most from their implementation. The Minister can be assured of a sharp and questioning discussion on those matters alone.
	The Minister also mentioned the right to buy, another controversial issue, particularly given that the discount has been lowered so much, especially in London, that the scheme is almost a thing of the past. Both the housing Bill and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill have a significant role in the Government's plans for sustainable communities. The plethora of consultation documents on revised planning guidance notes, regulations and reports from, for example, the Home Ownership Task Force, will need to be taken into account during the discussion of both Bills. The amount of housing, where it goes, the infrastructure to support it, and the conflict with proposals for new airports in the south east, in particular, are matters of great concern. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill and the housing Bill are relevant to all those issues, and local determination of developments is salient to the results.
	The fire and rescue Bill follows hot on the feet of the Fire Services Act 2003. All of us will breathe a sigh of relief that the Act was redundant before it started, that the hours we spent on it had not been required and that the majority of fire-fighters have now agreed to the terms of the settlement. That is good news that will enable consideration of this Bill, which contains many sensible proposals, to be carried out in an unfevered atmosphere, unlike its unlamented predecessor.
	The Government are obsessed with regionalisation. There is, therefore, a rationale from their point of view for continuing the absurd regionalisation of the fire service. As with housing, planning and government, it removes discretion and decision-making from local communities and their elected representatives. It will have serious consequences for the delivery of a responsive and high-class fire service—surely the purpose of this Bill.
	Sadly, too, the Government have failed to grasp the nettle by legislating to establish an independent mechanism for determining fire service pay to ensure that fire-fighters are properly rewarded for their invaluable and dangerous work. Their incorporation as a fire and rescue service, with all that that implies, makes that a grave omission. The history of the recent dispute leads one to believe that intervention in pay bargaining by, in this case, the Deputy Prime Minister should be avoided at all costs.
	The absence from the legislative programme of a regional assemblies Bill is puzzling. Plans for elections to assemblies are roaring ahead in the three northern regions. People are being encouraged to take up positions related to elected regional assemblies without the slightest idea of what is involved, but with a government-launched and slanted information campaign in full swing. During the passage of the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill, we debated the absolute need to publish a Bill in good time, prior to the elections, and for unpartisan information to be available to the electorate on regional government powers and responsibilities. Now we learn that the Deputy Prime Minister believes that the Bill should not be considered until after the elections. How about the electorate being asked to buy a pig in a poke?
	This will be a packed Session. With the Bills outlined in the Queen's Speech and others already appearing out of the woodwork—there has already been a First Reading of Bills that we did not expect—there is much to be done. I look forward to the Session ahead.

Baroness Maddock: My Lords, I thank the Minister for outlining clearly the areas of the gracious Speech that we shall debate today. I shall begin by discussing the Bills from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the main areas on which I speak for these Benches. I shall also touch briefly on the associated areas of energy and the environment, and shall take the opportunity to register our regret where we see serious omissions in the gracious Speech. My noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford will, with her usual ability, discuss education.
	I begin by discussing housing, as it is the area on which I speak most in this House. The Bill is based on the draft housing Bill, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said, has been around for some time. There is much to welcome in the Bill: the licensing of houses in multiple occupation, an issue that has been discussed for 10 years; the selective licensing of private landlords in areas of low demand; a new health and safety rating system to replace fitness standards; reforms of the right to buy to prevent abuse of the scheme; and, I hope, rights of succession for unmarried partners, including same-sex couples.
	As the Bill passes through the House, I am sure that we will have interesting discussions on much of the detail of those issues. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, we on these Benches are not in favour of the home information packs proposed in the Bill. We do not believe that they will achieve the Government's aim of speeding up house sales. That sector of housing is where we have the least problem in the country. The results of a pilot scheme in Bristol were not convincing. Considerable developments are taking place in home buying and selling, such as the National Land Information Service with e-lodgement at the Land Registry and proposals for electronic conveyancing. They will ease the process of buying and selling homes far more effectively than the proposals in the Bill for home information packs.
	From my experiences and those of my family—I am sure that others in this House will back this up—the difficulties of buying a house centre on trying to deal with those lending money for mortgages and those dealing with the legal matters, who never stick to timetables and never return phone calls. The proposals will not help that. In addition, the real problem with buying and selling even under these proposals is that the deal is signed and settled only when contracts are exchanged at the last minute. People can withdraw at any time beforehand. It is the market supply that is important. The home information packs will therefore not solve the problem.
	It is good to encourage people to market their homes properly, especially to draw attention to the energy efficiency of the properties that they are selling. However, we believe that such packs should be voluntary. Rather than insisting that people have them, we insist that they make it clear when they do not have one.
	There are serious omissions in the housing Bill. I agree with bodies such as the Law Society, the citizens advice bureaux and Shelter that would like to see the inclusion of a statutory scheme to deal with tenancy deposits. The Law Society puts this very well:
	"The proper management of deposits is a significant issue. If disputes about deposits are not resolved satisfactorily, tenants may not have the necessary funds to move onto the next property in the private rented sector"—
	a sector that we all want to see develop. The Law Society continues:
	"This affects people's mobility and may exacerbate homelessness. In addition research has shown that help with deposits leads to low-income families securing better-quality housing".
	There is a missed opportunity in this Bill on that issue. I would also like the Bill to have improved the conditions of those who live in park homes—an issue that I have spoken about in this House that I do not have time to go into in detail today—and to have introduced a statutory duty to facilitate the provision of sites for gypsies and travellers.
	On the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, in a Green Paper in 2001, the Government promised a clear and comprehensive planning system capable of reaching decisions that command public confidence. I have received briefings from several bodies, many of which feel that the planning Bill, despite being amended, is not keeping that promise very well. What we object to most about the Bill is that it is wrong to take strategic planning powers from the presently elected planning bodies and give them to unelected regional bodies. Until there are elected regional bodies, county councils must retain a statutory sub-regional planning role.
	The present system set out in the Bill involves a plethora of framework schemes, documents and statements that do not help the Government's aim of speeding things up and making things simpler. The planning system needs reform, but we need to take away the Government's excessive powers of intervention and devolve power back down to local communities. I listened with interest to what the Minister said. When I looked at the Bill, I did not think that it achieved that. The Minister said that local people would get a good opportunity. I hope that he is right.
	I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Minister about another issue. I understand that Kate Barker has been working for the Government on housing. She will be publishing details of her conclusions next week and I have heard that she may recommend changes to the planning system. If that is so, how will the Government approach the issue, given that the planning Bill is well advanced in the other House? Will we go through another system, with lots of new clauses being introduced in this House? On the 106 agreements, there is a lot of concern that I am sure we will discuss in great detail about whether the Government's proposals have been carefully thought out and whether the results will achieve the Government's aim.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and I spent many hours discussing the fire service in the last Session. Nevertheless, the new Fire and Rescue Services Bill is welcome. We are generally supportive of it, especially because it examines fire safety. However, safeguards are needed to ensure that the powers do not mean that accountability is taken away locally. Some of the proposals could lead to that.
	Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, we regret that things are missing from the remit of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the gracious Speech. As she pointed out, there is no draft Bill on regional planning powers. The Minister will remember that we discussed this in some detail when the Regional Assemblies Bill was passing through this House. On 7th April 2003, the Minister said,
	"as I repeated several times, we shall do our best to introduce a draft Bill before the referendum takes place".—[Official Report, 7/4/03; col. 27.]
	However, there was some confusion when the Deputy Prime Minister spoke in another place earlier this week, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, pointed out. At one point he said:
	"He must be well aware that I have promised that after the referendum takes place a Bill will be brought before the House",
	to spell matters out. But later on he said:
	"We have promised the House . . . a Bill in the July before the referendum".—[Official Report, Commons, 1/12/03; col. 248.]
	Will the Minister have a conversation with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to clarify this matter for us at some stage? It is extremely important that, when people are voting on these massive changes, they know exactly what they are voting for. It is true that local government reorganisation is going very well. It is well advanced and people have some idea about that, but they do not know about the powers.
	We on these Benches are most disappointed with omissions relating to environmental matters. The Government claim to put the environment at the heart of their agenda but, once again, the reality is rather disappointing. There is a nuclear bail-out Bill, but we would like to see much more legislation on the environment to deal with the problems of waste, traffic and energy consumption, which are all increasing. In the past, legislation affecting those areas has been left to Private Members' Bills. Energy efficiency in the home, waste, recycling and fuel poverty were all dealt with by Private Members' Bills. It is high time that the Government enabled us to discuss these matters in a proper way and not by that system. I regret that my noble friend Lord Ezra is not here to talk about those issues in greater detail, but he will put forward his views clearly at the Second Reading of the Energy Bill.
	We understand that, next week, there will be some announcements about the Comprehensive Spending Review. There was much about the environment in the energy White Paper. I hope that the Government will show us that the environment is at the heart of their agenda, given our disappointment with what was in the gracious Speech.
	I shall touch briefly on one other environmental matter, although my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford will talk about it in more detail: school transport. I acknowledge that the Government recognise the consequences of having too many children going to school in the car. But oh, dear. From what I have read—I admit that we have not seen the detail—the plans appear to have been drawn up by people who live in cities. They do not live in rural Northumberland, otherwise, if what I have read is right, they would not have made those proposals. Many children in rural Northumberland have to go more than three miles to school. For them, in effect, there will be no free education, something on which we have prided ourselves in this country. I hope that, by the time that the proposals reach the statute book, some compensation will have been made, to make sure that some children in rural areas do not miss out.
	The Minister spoke eloquently about the Government's desire to help people in rural areas. There was little in the speech. The Minister promised us another rural paper, but there is a serious problem.
	The big issue in local services is council tax. There was no mention of radical reform in the gracious Speech. This morning, on Radio 4, I heard the Minister, the right honourable Nick Raynsford, blaming local government, and I heard the right honourable David Curry for the Opposition blaming the Government. The debate was illuminated for us by the Audit Commission, which pointed out that the real problem was that 75 per cent of funding for local government came from central government, which makes life difficult. Everybody this morning avoided the issue of capping. I get angry when I think about capping; I have seen both sides change their mind, depending on whether they were in government or out of government.
	It is time that we reformed local government finance properly. We need a tax that is based on people's ability to pay. People will know that we think that there should a local income tax. We are already being told that it will not work and that we have not considered the details carefully. We have considered the details, and we continue to do so. There is detailed research on the matter. There are various countries, quite different in nature, in which local income tax works successfully.
	Time does not permit more detailed analysis today. In the coming weeks, as we go through the Bills, there will be more detailed scrutiny. There are some good proposals and some that need more scrutiny, but sadly, as I said, there are some glaring omissions.

Lord Grantchester: My Lords, I apologise for not being in my place at the start of the debate. I was somewhat thrown off my perch by being designated as a maiden. It is a rewarding privilege to be able to address your Lordships' House again, after getting my voice back. The warm welcome that I have received has been most invigorating.
	The gracious Speech did not make much mention of the rural agenda, but it is a time of fundamental change in the countryside. I take as my text the opening words of the gracious Speech:
	"My Government will maintain their key commitment to economic stability and growth".—[Official Report, 26/11/03; col. 1.]
	That is exactly what rural areas have needed for the past few years, as they have operated with product prices below the cost of production.
	It is a time of fundamental change, consequent upon last June's agreements in the European Union on the change of payment system. Payments are no longer based on production subsidies. There has been much debate on how the payments will affect rural areas. They will make a fundamental change in the way in which people adapt their business to go forward on a sustainable economic basis. We all want agriculture to stand on its own two feet alongside other industries.
	The decisions relate to the two systems of payment—historical payments and area-based payments. Debate has raged throughout the agriculture industry, and there has been much polarisation. Both systems will mean that many people will be severely disadvantaged, depending on how their farming system relates to the system that is adopted.
	We should try to devise a hybrid system under which the disadvantages that anyone will suffer under either system are minimised as far as possible. We should understand the payment system as a method of moving from a position in which there is a system of support to one in which there is no system of support. Consequent to that, we should try to mirror, as far as possible, the subsidies that went to people on the basis of their production profile, so that they will not be disadvantaged immediately but will be able to adapt their systems as quickly as possible.
	It has been stressed that we must consider the longer term. In an agricultural context, it is difficult to interpret the systems in any long-term way with regard to the agricultural cycle. In any case, they will, over time, shrink, because of modulation and depreciation due to inflation. We should manage the systems as far as possible to mitigate hardship in rural areas and should look for a new entry-level scheme, under which we go forwards rather than backwards. We should appreciate the value of agriculture and try, in some way, to put a measure on it. We should reward those who try to bring environmental benefits to society.
	Another consequential issue that is on the rural agenda is how we make agriculture sustainable in the longer term. That brings us to the supply chain code, under which producer groups in the supply chain feel at a distinct disadvantage in terms of economic power. We must look forward to enforcing the code more strictly, perhaps by introducing an ombudsman.
	I also look forward to discussing in your Lordships' House the changes that will result from the report prepared by my noble friend Lord Haskins on rural delivery. I agree fundamentally with my noble friend that delivery must be devolved to the regions. However, I know that there is great concern that the changes to fundamental structures that have already been made in the move towards regionalisation will, when added to the plethora of existing agencies and delivery systems, cause confusion about who is meant to be implementing what.
	I hasten caution to my noble friend to proceed at a careful pace so that the normal good functions of government are upheld at all times. With those few words, I look forward to the future debate in your Lordships' House.

Lord Palmer: My Lords, it is a great privilege on behalf of the whole House to welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and to congratulate him on his second maiden speech today. We have much in common: we were born in the same year, we are both farmers and we have both served on Sub-Committee D. But when I lived in Liverpool, we did not support the same football teams. I am delighted that we have another rural affairs supporter on the government Benches, who I hope will "never walk alone". I hope that we hear from him often and, indeed, for a long time to come.
	It is with sadness that I once again take part in the debate on the gracious Speech. From what Her Majesty said, this will be the last such occasion that I shall have to take part. My sadness is deepened that yet again there was no mention of anything remotely to do with the rural economy, although as President of the British Association for Bio Fuels and Oils, I was heartened to hear the words,
	"My Government will also introduce legislation on energy matters to establish a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and to promote secure sustainable supplies and a safer environment".—[Official Report, 26/11/03; col. 3.]
	However, I have to say that I was a little bemused to hear the Minister's opening remarks and his reference to greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
	With the announcement of 23 Bills in the gracious Speech, we are obviously in for a long and contentious time. As one newspaper headline announced,
	"Blair promises something to annoy everyone".
	With the leave of the House, I wish to repeat a few sentences that I made in the debate on the British countryside back in June.
	"The powerhouse of the countryside has to be a healthy, sustainable and profitable agricultural industry. This is why root and branch reform of the CAP is so urgently needed and why the current MTR review, now known as the Fischler report, must deliver, as it is a constant worry to all of us engaged in agriculture".—[Official Report, 11/6/03; col. 216.]
	I am aware that farmers have the reputation for crying wolf, but their problem is very real and inhibiting reinvestment. Farming incomes are lagging way behind the rate of inflation. Forty years ago, to buy a medium-sized tractor, one needed to sell 23,000 litres of milk or 11 prime cattle or 144 prime lambs. Today, that farmer would need to sell at least twice the produce to buy the same machine. It is interesting to note that 40 years ago, 40.8 per cent of the national weekly wage was spent on food. Today, just 16 per cent of the weekly wage is spent on food.
	Malting barley is worth half today what it was 20 years ago. I often wonder how many Ministers or, indeed, Defra officials would relish the idea of returning home to announce to their families that their income had been slashed to half what it had been 20 years ago. Surely, these figures emphasise the serious plight of farming today in the United Kingdom.
	Having had the privilege to sit on Sub-Committee D for the last three years and as a farmer, I am extremely worried about the MTR of the CAP. Only last week there was a frightening headline,
	"Mass exodus from UK arable".
	It went on,
	"as much as ¼ of the UK arable land could be removed from production as a result of the MTR of the CAP, according to a new study".
	In round terms, that is well over 1 million hectares—1 million hectares. With such an exodus nobody seems to have thought of the added costs of social security and housing benefit for the thousands who undoubtedly will be made redundant. The deficit to our balance of payments is frightening, as undoubtedly we will have to import more of our food. Surely, any economist with the minimum amount of intelligence would say that this was utter madness.
	I turn now to what I would like to consider as a glimmer of light from the gracious Speech—a glimmer for farmers and, indeed, for the nation as a whole. It is one that I have mentioned countless times on the Floor of the House and I make no apology for doing so yet again; that is, legislation on energy matters to promote secure, sustainable supplies and a safer environment.
	Ten days ago the European Union environment Ministers adopted legislation to allow member states to scrap duty on biofuels from January next year—not 2007 or some date after that, as so often applies to EU legislation, but next year. Germany has already signalled its intent to stay on the zero tax route. The reason that I started to get so involved in biofuels was that I found it irksome that my oil seed rape grown in Scotland was exported to Germany and turned into biodiesel. It must surely make sense for us in the United Kingdom to have our own vibrant biofuel industry. All sectors of our economy have a part to play in meeting our Kyoto targets.
	The UK is moving towards a net import position for road fuels under increasingly unsettled international conditions. I mention turmoil in the Middle East as perhaps a poignant reminder. It must be prudent to build up a viable if modest domestic biofuel production capacity to increase UK fuel security. This would also be extremely popular politically.
	The CO2 savings from biofuels are agreed at between 50 and 70 per cent better than fossil petrol and diesel and some 30 per cent better than road fuel gases, which have a 40 pence per litre rebate. Hence a blend of only 5 per cent can deliver a 3 per cent CO2 saving. There are also well proven air quality benefits from biofuels.
	Use of set-aside land for biofuel production would increase rural productivity. There need be no conflict with conservation interests if appropriate headland, woodland and spinney management is incorporated into biofuel production. A recent paper put to the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership by English Nature and the RSPB suggested that rape seed for fuel would have a positive effect on biodiversity. Current legislation should be sufficient to allay all other environmental concerns.
	Low biofuel blends can reach the customer very easily through the existing fuel distribution network (unlike gas) and without expensive engine conversions. In addition, the efficiency of fossil fuel combustion is increased by biofuel blends by up to almost 20 per cent. The assets of mainstream agriculture via conventional crop production will need to be brought into play to meet the likely need for biofuels, but at absolutely no extra cost to the prime producers. This must be a major added-value bonus.
	The UK has to submit to the EU its biofuel target for December 2005 by July 2004. We must ensure that when setting this target, Her Majesty's Government allow for the contribution from mainstream farming and not just waste cooking oils, as at present. If the full weight of UK agriculture was brought to bear, we could achieve the initial EU 2 per cent target in 2006 and 5.75 per cent by 2010, with a serious gain to our domestic energy supplies and a valuable reduction in CO2 emissions. The creation of a biofuels industry will create new employment and consequent tax revenues. These should go some way to balance the cost of the relevant fuel duties.
	The proposed legislation could be one of the most exciting Bills ever brought forward by any government. The Government support the principle that the polluter should pay. If biofuel inclusion was made mandatory, at 2 per cent inclusion, the cost of a 30 pence per litre rebate would be only some 0.25 pence per litre on the balance of fossil petrol and diesel over and above the 20 pence per litre rebate already in place for biodiesel and promised in January 2005 for bioethanol. Such an arrangement would ensure a whole new energy-creating rural industry. I deeply commend this principle to Her Majesty's Government. Two million tonnes of energy-saving liquid biofuels from British farms is an early and a practical target; 1 million tonnes from land now lying idle under set-aside and 1 million tonnes from the 3 million tonnes of wheat which, most years, is exported.
	I am particularly disappointed not to be able to take part in the Second Reading of the Energy Bill on 11th December, but I look forward to its subsequent stages.
	Turnip Townsend revolutionised British agriculture 190 years ago. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, could become known as "Biofuels Whitty". He could not only rejuvenate agriculture, but give us a cleaner, safer environment and a rural scene that our grandchildren will be happy and proud to live in.

Baroness Goudie: My Lords, I welcome the gracious Speech and the proposed energy legislation. Cleaner, greener power is surely something that we all wish to see being promoted. Therefore I very much welcome the new Energy Bill which will help to develop more environmentally friendly sources of power. I also welcome the contribution that it will make towards dealing with the United Kingdom's nuclear legacy.
	The major contribution that the Bill will make is to help to create a low-carbon economy. It is vital to ensure that, before long, a substantial proportion of the UK's electricity will come from renewable sources. The energy White Paper published earlier this year marked a milestone in energy policy, while the White Paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy, published last year, paved the way. The new Energy Bill will implement what is required.
	Many of the Bill's provisions are technical, but none the less they are vital to ensuring competitive and reliable energy supplies. I should like to highlight three aspects of the proposals. First, there is to be support for sustainable energy by enabling projects for wave and tidal power schemes, and for offshore wind farms to be built beyond our territorial waters.
	Secondly, provisions will secure the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear sites, along with the effective management of nuclear waste by creating for the first time a single body with complete responsibility in this area, the nuclear decommissioning authority. Thirdly, so that energy markets are made more competitive, the Bill will provide for the establishment of a single, wholesale electricity market, bringing greater choice for customers in Scotland and providing all generators and suppliers with access to the British-wide market.
	These policies are not merely for the "here"; they are also for now. They represent a strategy for the long term and a strategy for the three pillars of environmental protection: reliable energy, competitive markets and affordable energy for all. It is a strategy that will enable future generations to reap the rewards of cleaner, greener power.

Lord Wakeham: My Lords, as both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord preceding her talked about energy, I recall that I was formerly a Secretary of State for Energy. Somehow I wish that I had devoted my remarks today to energy matters rather than to education, on which I am going to speak.
	However, I want, first, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on his second maiden speech. That in itself is, I believe, a controversial statement in some parts of the House, but nevertheless he made a fine exit from the Chamber through no fault of his own. I hope that he will not make quite such a quick exit through the fault of his noble friends, but that remains to be seen.
	I declare an interest as the Chancellor of Brunel University. However, on this occasion I speak for myself and myself alone. I was never lucky enough to go to university and I started work when I was 17 years old. However, perhaps I should admit that, like the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Prescott, I was once a student of Ruskin College, Oxford, although I suspect that I ended up with rather different conclusions than he from that education. Therefore I approach the subject of higher education with a degree of humility.
	I welcome the reference made in the gracious Speech to a Bill to change the funding of higher education. Whether that Bill will go far enough remains to be seen, but I have great confidence in the Secretary of State for Education, whom I have known for many years. Further, as a former Chief Whip, if I was to say that he is a pretty good thug, that is meant as a compliment and not as a criticism. So we will have to see how he gets on with his noble friends as regards the Bill.
	However, I think that some things are clear: our higher education sector is falling behind the rest of the world, and there are many ways in which that can be tested. For example, we simply do not win our share of Nobel prizes that a population of our size would expect. Since 1980 the United States has won 34 Nobel prizes for physics, while we have not achieved a single one. What is also clear is that we spend far less on educating our students than do our competitors. We spend 30 per cent less than Australia, while the United States spends something like three times as much. We are near the bottom of the league of OECD countries.
	In my opinion, universities have relied for far too long on the taxpayer for the bulk of their income. As a result, they have developed far too many of the bad characteristics of state-run enterprises: lack of investment, a student/staff ratio which has doubled from nine to one to 18 to one over the past 10 years, and low staff salaries. We have nothing like the endowments enjoyed by American universities. I gather that some 39 American universities benefit from endowments of more than 1 billion dollars. I know of no British university which can match that. The Treasury is right to call for further initiatives in this area, but in doing so it must ask the question whether additional fiscal incentives will be necessary, certainly in the short run. I think that there is a very strong case for providing incentives in the short term.
	If it is agreed that more resources are urgently needed, then it is absolutely unrealistic—a pipedream—to think that the Government are going to provide them. They have their priorities and I fear that higher education is not one of them. Per capita spending on health has increased by 64 per cent while spending on higher education has decreased. In any case, the current system of funding through the Higher Education Funding Council, giving each university a quota of subsidised places, does not encourage the best use of resources. It means that no matter how well or how badly universities treat their students, every one gets a fixed allocation of subsidised places. In my view, that is not the way to encourage excellence.
	The system is also coming to the end of its useful life because it is not compatible with offering the kind of choices that students will increasingly demand, in particular if they are contributing more themselves. A significant increase in tuition fees payable by graduates will accelerate the demand for better universities and, most importantly, more relevant courses, which will be a good thing. I shall certainly study the Bill when it is published and I hope that I shall see provisions to ensure maximum flexibility in the fees to be charged and capacity for payments of bursaries to those who have difficulty in paying those fees. Investment in a good university education, with repayment terms that are both fair and generous, will increasingly be seen as the best investment of a lifetime.
	The lack of resources available to British universities is also clearly reflected in academic pay. We lag well behind the salaries offered in other countries and most universities have reported increasing difficulties in recruiting staff.
	In conclusion, I give two more reasons why a Government initiative in this area would be welcome. First, we need to educate more of our young people rather than fewer, and we need to educate them better. If there is any doubt about that, we need only look at what our international competitors are doing. Secondly, higher education is the best path to social mobility. It provides the fairest and most acceptable way to maintain a dynamic society. Education through a high-quality university system is the best way to ensure that Britain is a country in which talent is nurtured and rewarded.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, several references were made in this year's gracious Speech to the Government's policies and legislation on environmental issues which should continue and strengthen their current actions in this field. As an environmental scientist and activist—I declare an interest as a professor, a director and chair of two NGOs—I should like to comment on this programme, which has a generally intelligent approach and utilises the political, administrative and economic methods at the Government's disposal.
	There should of course be improvements, especially in the joined-up action of government agencies and departments. As any local politician will tell you—and I used to be one—getting right the environmental issues is vital to political success. While in the UK there are many active non-governmental organisations, we have no MPs from green parties. In European countries the reverse is found.
	Environmental policy should be based on thorough science and a technical knowledge of the environment and its potential for both sustaining life and mitigating disasters. Everyone now recognises that sustainable environmental policies can be put into practice only if they are well understood and accepted by communities, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, emphasised.
	New approaches to consultation and public involvement are being tried all the time. The report of Professor Grant's seminars on the use of genetically modified organisms in the UK makes very interesting reading, especially as it concluded that people's greatest concern was that they could not trust the scientific data. Similar concern has been expressed by environmental groups, by foreign countries which are worried about low-level radioactivity in the UK and by the fishing industry in regard to fish stocks. Does Defra—perhaps in concert with the Office of Science and Technology and the research councils—have a strategy for ensuring greater confidence and transparency in government research? This could be achieved, for example, by ensuring that all scientific work is properly peer reviewed in scientific literature, which, as I understand it, is not the case with some high-profile governmental reports.
	The Government should also ensure that more resources are devoted to environmental monitoring as well as to basic environmental research. This point was made strongly by senior environmentalists at a recent conference on the Arctic.
	The third strand of environmental policy is that it is an essential part of economic growth in a modern society. I was astonished that at a recent press conference to announce the huge international programme to clean up the Russian Arctic a journalist even asked whether economic growth and environmental clean-up were compatible. Some noble Lords may have heard the old expression of "Where there's brass there's muck" or "Where there's muck there's brass". This should now be interpreted quite differently by progressive industries as "Making brass from the muck"—but, preferably, we should avoid making the muck in the first place.
	I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government's commitment to encouraging enterprise will focus on the huge potential everywhere in the UK to develop environmental projects, especially small and medium-scale enterprises. The biofuels aspect was referred to by my noble kinsman, the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. The problem of waste is an excellent example of where local and regional governments can contribute to building up international capabilities.
	The balancing of environmental, housing and employment decisions is an essential part of planning, as several noble Lords have said. How will the new powers help in this difficult role where too many wrong decisions have been made in the past, especially in regard to building on flood planes?
	It is not the style of the gracious Speech to scare us, but, as with the health and security issues referred to in this year's Speech, environmental issues should concern us very seriously indeed. Climate change, which is being considered in Milan this week, is accelerating and its effects are touching ever more people, businesses and countries. The Russian Minister whom I met yesterday in Moscow confirmed that Russia has not decided against signing Kyoto. That was a press briefing too far by certain people.
	We have learnt that there were more than 20,000 excess deaths this year in Europe as a result of the summer heatwave. Fortunately, such deaths were largely avoided in the UK through the good long-range forecasts of our meteorologists and a highly responsive health service. Floods are likely to increase and probably high winds as well.
	On the one hand, the Government are working to mitigate climate change through alternative energy and perhaps nuclear power—although they could be a little more proactive in that regard—and, on the other hand, the proposed legislation for civil security is welcome. This is one aspect of adapting to climate change. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government will clarify the responsibilities of central, regional and local agencies, as well as European and UN agencies, all of whom are making valuable contributions.
	We know about Chernobyl and I understand that the oil from the "Prestige" has now reached Guernsey. The legislation should ensure a more integrated approach that is common to different types of disaster and to security alarms. Social science research—for example, at the University of Middlesex—has demonstrated that the planning and immediate response at local level could be improved as different kinds of disaster have many common aspects in the best method of response.
	Politically, the Government need to be equally focused on ensuring that the environment is healthy and comfortable. Good air quality in urban areas provides a huge bonus for health, especially for those with asthma. One hopes that the Government will consider the effect it will have on runners in the London Olympics in the summer of 2012, as Beijing has already for the summer of 2008 in collaboration with UK consultants. What will the Government do, through regulation and the encouragement of local authorities, to ensure that local planning and advance technology vehicles assist in the further progress of cleaning up the air in our cities?
	Finally, measures are absolutely necessary to reduce noise—especially in residential areas—to continental levels, in particular the noise produced by traffic and aeroplanes. These measures should reflect planning, technology and social behaviour. The UK, I am glad to say, is no longer the sick man of Europe or the dirty man of Europe, but we might become labelled as the noisy man of Europe. One wonders whether the gracious Speech will need extra amplification in this regard in future.

Lord Chorley: My Lords, I do not intend to follow the "noisy" path of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, but I shall confine my remarks to environmental issues. I should have liked to speak to the planning Bill but time is so short that I must press on to my main theme—that is, the Government's renewable energy policy and, specifically, onshore wind power and draft Planning Policy Statement No. 22.
	The first point I wish to make is that wind turbines are both inefficient and intrusive. Moreover, wind is unreliable—it comes and goes unpredictably—and it is harnessed in the wrong place. The Government's target of 10 per cent by 2010 will require, according to the Minister at a recent Question Time, 3,000 to 5,000 wind turbines. Presumably by 2020 it will be at least double that. That is a huge number of wind turbines.
	As a consequence, this means that the National Grid will have to be rebuilt because the electricity will be generated in the wrong places and in very small dollops. The regulator has put the cost of rebuilding the grid at more than £1 billion. Notwithstanding this, the Government clearly seem to believe that wind is the only show in town and they are happy to bend normal planning rules to promote it. That is my concern.
	I said that wind farms are intrusive. They are hugely intrusive. The new generation wind turbines are bigger than St Paul's. Anyone who has seen the wind turbines in Cornwall, Wales or the edges of the Lake District and thinks that they are rather attractive has not seen anything yet. They are on a scale which completely dwarfs our upland landscapes. They are huge industrial structures—there is no other word for it—which are quite alien to our countryside.
	If you mark out on a map of Cumbria the wind farms now operating, under construction or under evaluation, there are more than 20 sites ringing the national park. How many there will be in the years ahead, I have not the faintest idea. But as of today a noose is encircling the national park and the proposed Planning Policy Statement No. 22 specifically aims to encourage it. Paragraph 12, which is entitled,
	"Buffer Zones and Local Designations",
	states:
	"Regional planning bodies and local planning authorities should not create 'buffer zones' around international or nationally designated areas and apply policies to these zones that prevent the development of renewable energy projects. Nor should local landscape and local nature conservation designations be used in themselves to refuse planning permission for renewable energy developments".
	National parks are not, to adapt the poet Donne, "islands entire of themselves". They are set in a wider context of geography and landscape. That applies equally to AONBs, which I remind noble Lords under the 1949 Act have equal landscape value to national parks. One simply cannot divorce them from their surroundings at the convenience of an administrative boundary. What about the people who live and earn their living in the boundary areas of the national parks? They have already suffered from foot and mouth disease, particularly in Cumbria, and their future economy is now likely to depend on a judicious mix of niche farming and tourism. I have in mind the excellent Curry report which hints at a possible way forward. The serried ranks of these huge structures are hardly likely to be attractive to the tourism on which such areas will depend. They are anathema.
	Therefore, I urge the Government to look again at the drafting of PPS 22. Am I alone in finding it ironic that in a recent news release on 5th November, which ran the headline,
	"Planning must work for the environment",
	the Minister went on to say:
	"The purpose of the consultation is to explore how locals and central government can work together"—
	noble words—
	"to deliver renewable energy without unnecessary blight to the countryside"?
	Furthermore it is argued, and it is implicit in PPS 22, that this is in the interests of sustainable development which betrays to me a very serious misunderstanding of what that phrase means—a much abused concept. On the whole nowadays it tends to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. I think the Red Queen had something to say about that in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
	I conclude with a final point. There are many applications for wind farms in Cumbria and no doubt there are many more to come. Each is likely to be fiercely fought over by the local inhabitants. It seems absurd to hold perhaps a dozen—or maybe more—public inquiries, in many instances in overlapping areas. Surely there must be a better way forward. Would it not be fairer and more sensible to establish a reasonable amount of wind farm energy to come from Cumbria outside the national park and its buffer zones and then to settle the individual sizes and locations by a single inquiry? Would it not also be fairer to arrive at the Cumbrian share by apportioning the national renewables obligation by reference to the geographical distribution of population in England? In the north there is a good deal of resentment. Why should those in the north supply power and ruin the countryside for the sake of the south? It would be interesting to see if we had a 350-foot high wind farms on the edge of the Chilterns, possibly near Chequers. Why should Cumbria be blighted for the convenience of the south-east?

Lord Biffen: My Lords, although my remarks will refer to livestock and dairy products, the thrust of my argument concerns the European Union and it would have been more appropriate to have delivered them yesterday, but because of hospital treatment that was not possible. I am most grateful for your Lordships' tolerance which has enabled me to make my remarks in today's debate.
	I have not done very much research on this topic. I have sat here in my place at Question Time and noted that, on 3rd November, my noble friend Lord Higgins inquired about,
	"powers to prevent the export of live horses for slaughter".—[Official Report, 3/11/03; col. 518.]
	On 12th November the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London inquired about,
	"progress in . . . negotiations with the European Commission to introduce a 5 per cent rate of VAT on repairs and maintenance to listed places of worship".—[Official Report, 12/11/03; col. 1351.]
	Finally, on 13th November my noble friend Lord Monro of Langholm inquired,
	"Whether there are any plans by the European Union to ban the use of the descriptive term 'yoghurt' as used in the United Kingdom".—[Official Report, 13/11/03; col. 1568.]
	Those three matters do not seem to me to be the commanding heights of the economy. They seem to be exactly the kind of matters that we should be able to decide on our own account, using our own institutions of this Parliament and thus to fashion our relationships within Europe, trying to breathe some life into the concept of subsidiarity—an ugly and meaningless word, spawned at the time of the Maastricht Treaty. I regret that in the gracious Speech there is no commitment to try to crusade to make a reality of subsidiarity, so that the three items that I have mentioned almost casually could quite properly be where they should be in the context of European decision-making.
	When thinking about the historic sequence of events in Europe, I make this reflection having observed the words of Aristide Briand, the French prime minister after the Locarno decisions, when he said:
	"A Locarno nous avons parle european. C'est une langue nouvelle qu'il faudre bien que l'on apprenne".
	I can distribute the English text for any sceptics who feel it is required. It seems to me that we are seriously out of focus in our approach to Europe. We are now discussing the prospects of a constitution. I have no objection to there ultimately being a constitution or some formula that will govern the relationships of a Europe that is enlarged to include the applicant countries and holding in trust the likely further expansion to include countries like Croatia, Turkey and maybe others. However, we have a more immediate challenge which is to try to rid ourselves of a burgeoning bureaucracy that does little to enhance the cause of Europe. We need in the name of realism and of idealism a commitment to see that the nation states—

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. On his point of burgeoning bureaucracy, which is smaller than the number of officials employed by Surrey County Council, does he not welcome the provision in the European draft constitution to give, for the first time, to the national parliaments some opportunity to pronounce and effectively to intervene when there are matters that are properly dealt with at national level? Is that not a great advance for Europe?

Lord Biffen: My Lords, within the ambit of a seven-minute speech, I think that it is very generous of me to give way. However, I would welcome that prospect if subsidiarity, which was promised at Maastricht, had in fact delivered anything tangible as a consequence. Nevertheless, we will travel together and we will argue together, and I hope that we will come to mutual conclusions.
	I conclude as I had intended by saying that it is not just practicality but idealism which requires us to see that the nation state is at the centre of our European relationships and has the authority to carry out the things that are most appropriate for it.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, while totally agreeing with almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, said, I should like to revert to the environment and indeed to deliver the Green Party's own Queen's Speech since I am serving notice that I intend to introduce legislation on these subjects in your Lordships' House failing the Government taking them up.
	The first subject is unadopted roads. I asked a Question on this in your Lordships' House on Tuesday. Although I received a straight reply to the question, "What are the Government going to do about them", which was, "Nothing", I received less than a straight reply from the Minister when in my supplementary I pointed out the evils of pests, dangers of accident and crime and the general environmental degradation involved and that the Government's solution—that local authorities should act—was no solution at all since they were not going to act seeing that there were neither incentives for them to do so or penalties if they did not do so and that in the nature of things there were therefore no votes in it.
	I am also hoping that your Lordships will allow me to introduce a Bill next Tuesday on air traffic reduction. The Bill will propose a reduction in emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and greenhouse gases due to air traffic as well as reducing pollution around airports and in the upper atmosphere. The intended effect is to reduce the amount of air traffic and thus eliminate the demand for new runways to be built.
	The Government have predicted that the demand for air travel will treble over the next 30 years and that new runways must be built to meet that demand. That is an old-fashioned "predict and provide" policy. "Predict and provide" was abandoned for roads policy after it was reported that more roads would simply attract more traffic and would not end congestion. Predict and provide is not a sound policy for air transport either. The Green Party is not alone in this field. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in its 18th Report on Transport and the Environment, said:
	"an unquestioning attitude toward future growth in air travel, and an acceptance that the projected demand for additional facilities must be met, are incompatible with the aims of sustainable development".
	Aviation is the most highly polluting transport mode on Earth and its pollution constitutes a major hidden cost to the economy. Aviation is also subsidised directly and indirectly by the taxpayer and is a major drain on the UK balance of payments. The most important, but least obvious impact of aircraft is the contribution to climate change. When burnt, aircraft fuel is converted to carbon dioxide and water. The global warming effects of carbon dioxide are well recognised and much attention is now being paid to the issue. However, carbon dioxide emitted by aircraft on international flights is excluded from national targets for the Kyoto agreement. The costs of UK aviation's contribution to climate change are estimated at well over £2 billion a year in 2001.
	Aircraft emit large quantities of pollution on their landing and takeoff cycle. The most important pollutants are concentrated on Heathrow and places like that. Small particulate matter is less a problem from aircraft, the majority around airports coming from the road traffic and fixed sources such as power plant. However, the health costs of air pollution from the aviation sector are estimated at more than £1.3 billion per year. But the impact that most concerns those living near airports is noise, particularly—but not only—night flights. When I was a vicar in Kew, the services in one of my churches had to be paused periodically because of the overhead flights. It did not make for particularly easy preaching or indeed for reading of the Word.
	Professor John Whitelegg, in the Green Party's Aviation's Economic Downside report, stated:
	"The overall hidden economic costs of the European Union's aviation sector are currently estimated at £14.3 billion a year—of which the UK alone accounts for £3.8 billion, or 26 per cent".
	That does not include the costs of aviation accidents and accident services.
	Aviation is under-taxed compared with most other sectors of the economy. Flight tickets, aircraft and aviation fuel are all zero-rated for VAT which costs the Treasury vast sums. All those costs and subsidies are increasing rapidly as the aviation sector grows. The application of a fairer tax regime on aviation could cut UK passenger numbers to 59 per cent of the figure forecast for 2020.
	We want rigorous action to curb the growth of the aviation sector through a seven-point plan: the European-level charge on aviation; an end to all public subsidies to aviation; investment in less polluting travel alternatives; research into and promotion of further alternatives to business air travel, including more video conferencing, tele-presence and so on; optimisation of air traffic control; changes in land use planning law; and a public education programme. The Bill which I propose to introduce into your Lordships' House will implement the first of those; that is, air traffic emissions charges.
	The Greens in the London Assembly—where the Green Party is fairly represented, unlike in Parliament—believe that Heathrow's hidden costs of £520 million should be reclaimed through a combination of fuel taxes, emissions charges and congestion charging. The air traffic reduction Bill will be just a first step towards getting the aviation industry under control. It would reduce pollution from air traffic and remove the need for new runways.
	In environmental terms, these Bills are needed. If the Government will not act, then the Green Party must.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, during the last years of the Conservative government I became familiar with the process of speaking in the debate on the Queen's Speech and using the expression, "I regret that there is no mention of . . . ". The subject that I wanted then was, of course, the return of a Scottish Parliament, which has subsequently been achieved. For the next few years I did not feel the need to use those words. Now, however, I wish to do so again. So here they are. I regret that there is no mention of the devolution of the whole railway in Scotland.
	I am impressed by the actions of the Scottish Parliament in dealing with the parts of the railway that are devolved. Those are, of course, the ScotRail passenger franchise, freight facilities grants, new railways, Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive and the other passenger transport authorities as they evolve. So far, the Scottish Parliament has decided what sort of a passenger railway is required, and the current franchise renewal process has a subsidy of £210 million attached to it. At the same time, the executive has bought about 20 new trains—Class 170 Turbostars—for the passenger railway. That means that almost all of the Class 150 Sprinters can be cascaded into English and Welsh franchises. It is also worth remembering that ScotRail and Strathclyde PTE have no Class 140 Pacers in use. For anoraks, there is one Class 140 Pacer set in Scotland, on the private railway in the Dufftown area.
	My principal argument is this. Scotland can decide, and has decided, what sort of passenger railway it wants, excluding, of course, GNER and the two Virgin franchises, West Coast and CrossCountry. My argument for the devolution of the freight railway and for the track and infrastructure is based on my answer to the question: is the railway in Scotland a peripheral regional railway or a national railway? My answer is, emphatically, that it is a national railway. With the precise exception of the three cross-border franchises already mentioned, the Stranraer to Newcastle and the Caledonian sleeper services, the vast majority of passenger trains start and finish in Scotland.
	I agree that there are also cross-border freight services, and I encourage that. That is a long-term benefit of the Union treaty. However, when I come to consider the track and infrastructure, that is when the argument is strongest. With the exception of the East Coast Main Line and the West Coast Main Line, all the other Scottish main lines are classed by Network Rail as principal secondary routes, and are thus starved of investment. That is not because the Strategic Rail Authority does not like Scotland but because the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail have to concentrate on the south-east of England, which is undoubtedly their busiest area.
	Devolution of the track and infrastructure in Scotland would allow the Scottish Parliament to receive additional funding through the block grant for the whole railway. Scotland could then decide for itself what kind and quality of a national railway system it wants, as do our neighbours in Ireland and Norway.
	The prospect I conclude with is that of Virgin Pendolinos and GNER Mallards running at 140 miles an hour in places in Scotland and then slowing down for the English sections. Similarly, high speed running could be achieved in places on the principal routes from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness.
	Nothing I have said today undermines the devolution settlement. It would merely devolve responsibility for railways to the same degree as is already devolved for roads in Scotland. The Government have produced a tightly drawn Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Bill. This could be redrawn so that modifications could be made to Schedule 5, Section E2, rail transport, or, indeed, a separate Scotland Act order could be proposed.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I shall address the needs of children and young people rather than higher education which will be debated by many other noble Lords. I must declare an interest as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. I believe very strongly that if the health, social, emotional, educational and economic needs of children were addressed, many problems relating to, for example, anti-social behaviour and offending would be tackled. This Government have made noble attempts to deal with child poverty, family welfare and underachievement, and that should be welcomed.
	The welfare of children crosses many boundaries, and I know that some noble Lords, including myself, have found it difficult to decide in which debate to speak. That is perhaps a good sign. The gracious Speech included a number of Bills that will have an impact on children's lives and there will be much debate around particular issues. Child trust funds will provide an endowment for all children and more for those from poorer families and the child protection Bill will have an impact on the way in which services for children are organised. The Asylum and Immigration Bill also has implications for children and families. The Domestic Violence Bill should provide greater protection to victims and witnesses, many of whom will be children.
	Children, of course, do not come in distinct parts with one labelled education, another health and so on, and, of course, there are many different types of children: children from different home backgrounds, different races or cultures; looked after children; children with disabilities; young carers; children of asylum seekers and travellers; and children of different gender and sexual orientation. It is not an easy task to cover all needs but it is our responsibility at a national and local level to do our best. I strongly support the creation of a children's commissioner for England as a champion for children.
	In the brief time that I have available today I shall put forward some views on three matters: first, on some of the new structures proposed to benefit children; secondly, on citizenship education and, thirdly, on education for parenthood. I shall base my remarks largely on a consultation exercise carried out in five parts by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children with Members of both Houses of Parliament, the statutory and voluntary sector and with young people themselves. In doing so, I must pay tribute to the energy and commitment shown by the children's group administrators based at the National Children's Bureau and to all those who took part in the consultation which gave us the substance of the group's response to the Green Paper, Every Child Matters.
	First, I turn to new structures. It is good to see proposals to extend the statutory safeguarding duties and responsibilities held solely by local authority social services departments to other professionals and agencies. A clear message needs to be acted on—that all services at a local level, including housing, education and prison services have a duty to care for and protect children. Statutory local safeguarding boards should ensure that there is capacity within the community to safeguard children. The creation of the post of Director of Children's Services could provide a single simple structure for accountability. I recognise that details need to be worked out, in particular which services the director will manage directly. The appropriate sharing of information proposed in the Green Paper is essential in order to protect children. How and when that information is shared will be crucial. School-based intervention services could be powerful in detecting emotional and behavioural difficulties. When I was first in teaching there were school counsellors in many schools. I think that we should bring back counselling services for young people.
	There is much that is worthwhile in the review of services and I shall look to the Minister to clarify how the system will hang together and how, for example, children's trusts can be most effective. Should they not, for example, reach into youth justice?
	I now turn to the school system and comment on citizenship education and education for parenthood. It is interesting that both those topics arose in every one of the five consultation exercises carried out by the all-party group. The young people present were themselves vocal on these issues, particularly on citizenship education. It was felt that citizenship education should include classes on parenting, finances and politics and should be very practical and be taught by specialist teachers or relevant outside organisations. It was felt that citizenship education is about getting young people involved in their community and about skills for life. There was some cynicism on the part of the young people about citizenship education being a soft option relegated to filling in worksheets and answering factual questions far too often. I suggest to the Minister that we need some actual examples of good practice from schools that are taking this area seriously. Citizenship, together with personal, social and health education, can provide some solid foundations for children and young people who are less confident and knowledgeable about life skills. In turn, this can enhance academic achievement.
	Supporting parents and carers forms part of section three of the Green Paper. The consultees felt that parenting skills were often taught only when something had gone wrong. Promoting parenting services should be seen as a routine part of life and not as a stigma or sign of failure. Such education should surely begin in school and not just for the less academic, as it certainly used to be, but for all pupils. Many will become parents a few years after leaving school with no knowledge of what that will entail. It does not always come naturally, as we know to our cost. Parenting skills may be more useful to pupils than many other lessons undertaken, may be more memorable and may benefit their children in turn, thus helping to resolve the notorious cycle of deprivation.
	I look forward to working with the Minister on the children Bill. Could I also ask her to collaborate with colleagues in discussing the areas that I have raised today? They are but part of a much wider jigsaw. The jigsaw has in the past had pieces missing or been too difficult to put together. Can we strive now to make the systems and structures which affect children more cohesive and powerful at a local and national level? This is a great opportunity which we should grasp with enthusiasm.

Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, the topic that I would like to address is higher education. I declare an interest. I held the role of vice-chancellor of Oxford University from 1985 to 1989, and was a deputy chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, as it was then called. In that role, we were confronted with a permanent shortfall in money and a winding down of government support. I speak in a totally non-political position. Those were the days of a Conservative government who did not provide adequate money for the universities. That situation continues today. I remember on one occasion I adapted the poem and said, "Does the road wind downhill all the way?". The answer to my question was yes—every year less money was available.
	I shall talk a little in a moment about Oxford, but I am aware that many other universities have suffered singular deprivation as a result of funding shortage. The latest to come to my attention is Durham, where, as some noble Lords will be aware, the department of east Asian studies is on the point of being closed down, with a loss of impetus in an area that needs special protection. That sort of news is tragic.
	I shall develop my two themes, which are that more money is needed and that we should not be ashamed of or mock the excellence of certain universities. I particularly have in mind the charge against Oxford and Cambridge of being elite. I would prefer to substitute "very good" for that. They are aiming to match the standards set by the best American universities. Unless we match those standards here, we will slip.
	I shall give an Oxford figure for funding. In the money that comes in to be spent on teaching, there is a shortfall of £23 million a year. I dare say that the Cambridge figure is not very different. There has to be cross-subsidy from other parts of the income. It is said that the universities are not doing enough to help themselves. Currently, Oxford is raising about £163 million from research and contact with industry. In other ways, we have been running a campaign to raise money on a fund-raising basis from sources all round the world. I was connected with that when it began in 1988.
	The shortfall of money makes it imperative that there be an additional supply. If the only route that can be found for that is top-up fees, let it be top-up fees. In my perception, it is not unreasonable that the students who benefit from the education that they receive should be called on at a later date to repay the debt. The repayment is not required until they are in an earning position.
	We can argue about whether the point for payment should be at a salary of £15,000 or £20,000 per annum and about the detail, but in principle students are getting a pretty good deal. Money is paid up-front on their behalf, with a nil interest rate and payback when they are in a position to do so. If they cannot do so—if they are primary school teachers, care workers or in some dedicated form of work that produces a very low income—the day may never come when they have to repay. Again, that seems entirely fair. If they benefit from the education and are able to earn much larger salaries than ordinary people, I do not for the life of me see why they should not be called on to make repayment under a fairly worked-out scheme.
	That is my first point—that more income is needed and that I do not see in principle any deep-rooted objection to what is proposed. The argument has been raised that the fees will be a deterrent—that children from a poorer background will say, "That is not for me", and that their parents will warn them against university. I am not sure that there is any compelling evidence for that. It is an assertion at the moment, with certain parts of the media asserting that it is the case. It is not borne out by the Australian experience, and is not a rational argument. Time will show whether it is true or false.
	One cure or remedy for the argument is that the universities will have to be particularly astute in having proper bursary provisions and schemes in place to help those who are really disadvantaged. A lot of that is already happening. I am sure that noble Lords will not ignore the fact that universities have been widening access and making provision for those who have very little money. Harvard recruits on quality. It goes round the United States, picks the ablest students and then says, "What are your financial needs?". If a student has wealthy parents, nothing is needed. If they have no money at all, Harvard provides. There has to be a back-up bursary system working alongside. That is being worked out.
	I do not have long to speak on my other theme, but noble Lords will see what I have in mind on the question of universities being elite. It is absolutely essential that we have excellent universities in this country that have an international reputation. I was involved quite often at Oxford in recruiting people, particularly some very fine scholars from America. Two factors really got them to come to Oxford. One was the quality of the academic community with which they would be associated. In other words, they would be coming to work with people at the same peer level as their own in America. The other—I say this without any feeling of shame—was the magnetism of the college system, the form of life that could be provided for someone in the humanities by being a member of a college. Those were the twin attractions that enabled one to persuade Americans to come to Oxford at a much lower salary than they could command elsewhere in the world.
	I hope that, whatever scheme is introduced, the Government will place a large measure of trust in the universities to run their own system. Let them pick the students whom they want. Let them develop the disciplines and subjects that they think best suited and that they want to develop. The fewer controls and restrictions placed on them, the better. I am not saying that suggestions cannot be made or guidance offered and so on, but it is imperative to allow the academic communities to run their own system as they know best.
	Those are my thoughts on the matter. We should look forward to increasing the excellence of the universities, and should not be ashamed of having two or three that are particularly distinguished. The aim should be to bring the level up for all universities. Intrinsically, we have the basis of a marvellous system and some wonderful teachers in the university system throughout the land.

Lord Quirk: My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Neill, both literally and thematically. First, I shall say a word on our socially uneven participation in higher education, especially in the 19 Russell group universities. In her answers to recent questions of mine, the Minister has told me that those universities are admitting more students from the relatively small independent and grammar sector than from the huge numbers attending comprehensive schools. Indeed, in two of the Russell group—Oxford and Cambridge—only about one fifth of new students come from comprehensives; well over half come from independent schools—54.5 per cent in 2002.
	This imbalance is something that universities have been struggling to rectify for decades. In part, the problem is down to comprehensive pupils lacking the self-confidence or ambition to apply to top universities—lacking too the support and encouragement of their teachers to do so.
	In his memoirs, Wings of a Man's Life, my late friend Gorley Putt writes of his constant frustration as admissions tutor at Christ's College, Cambridge, in the 1970s. Year after year, he and his colleagues made enthusiastic recruiting visits to big comprehensives up and down the country. I quote his words:
	"'We don't allow our kids to apply to Oxbridge', I would be told. They tried to prevent me even from meeting possible candidates".
	This is an area, surely, which the new office for fair access should look at, if only to see how widespread are such appalling attitudes.
	But of course the chief reason for the abiding imbalance in admissions is the failure of comprehensives to come anywhere close to independent schools in pupil achievement at A-level. In answer to another of my questions, the Minister told me that in 2001 and 2002, the proportion of students getting straight As at A-level was 5 per cent at comprehensive schools but 23 per cent at independent schools.
	It will take a long time to get state secondary schools up to scratch, though the specialist schools—now nearly 1,500 of them—are showing the way. It is their aim to do well not only in their specialism—be it science, technology or foreign languages—but for this to rub off on the rest of the national curriculum.
	There are examples to show that this is working. Members of the Wolfson Foundation education panel were struck last month by the William Howard School in Cumbria. This has the status of a specialist school in science. But in last year's exams it had huge numbers getting GCSEs and A-levels in two foreign languages. One was of course French, but 80 youngsters got their GCSEs in Italian, which is almost an endangered species in British education.
	With more schools like this, and with aspiration to match, we will come closer to the "world-class education" promised in the gracious Speech and to a better balance at university. But I am not holding my breath.
	I turn now to the issue of university finance, which, as my noble friend Lord Neill said, is urgent and indeed critical. I declare an interest as a Fellow of UCL. Over the past 20 years, state funding per student has fallen, in today's money, from about £10,000 per student to about £5,000. We now make a loss on every undergraduate we teach. Where till recently we had a university system that matched the best in the world, few would have the confidence to make such a claim today.
	It is to the Government's credit that the seriousness of the position is well understood and is being addressed: as it is in Australia, with Brendan Nelson's Bill now before the Canberra Parliament. The proposal here to allow universities to charge supplementary tuition fees up to £3,000 is a welcome step in the right direction, but let no one think that it is other than a modest step. The current Economist uses the word "trivial". It is not trivial, but it would become so if the plan were to be watered down to a lower level than £3,000 or compromised by being made universal across all institutions and all fields of study. Then our problems would be made worse rather than better and the Government would have fluffed the chance of making a step-change towards the policy, repeatedly stated by Secretary of State Charles Clarke, to introduce competition between universities and between courses within universities. I quote from his website last week, and the same words were used in his speech in the House of Commons yesterday, at col. 536 of Hansard of 3rd December. He said:
	"A flat-rate fee is simply unjust . . . to charge the same amount across the board irrespective of the demand, nature, or quality of the course and the potential rate of return for the student".
	To object to this with talk of creating a "two-tier" university system is to be seriously at odds with reality. We actually need—in fact we actually have—not a two-tier system but a finely graded multi-tier system. Differential fees are essential to reflect and promote such gradience, essential too if we are to have honest transparency and plain common sense in the costing of higher education.
	This being so, it is for consideration at Second Reading of the forthcoming Bill whether we cannot move a little towards the corollary by some modest tweaking of the £3,000 limit. Might not universities be given the freedom of virement within a total of £3,000 per admitted student, so that they could vary supplementary fees within an institution-wide average—I stress that—of £3,000?
	This would involve no additional cost to the Exchequer and universities would be able—indeed, almost forced—to test their claim of superior provision by challenging lower fees at a rival university and charging, say, £5,000 a year for courses with a good "rate of return" (say, law or accountancy) while choosing to attract students to maths or nursing with a low (or no) supplementary fee.
	But for the present it is enough to ask the Minister whether those two admirable aims in the gracious Speech—
	"a world-class education system",
	and,
	"Universities . . . on a sound financial basis"—[Official Report, 26/11/03; col. 1.],
	are not merely connected but contingent. Can we have the one without the other?

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government, in response to the report of my noble friend Lord Laming on the tragic death of Victoria Climbie, introduced in the gracious Speech the children's Bill that we have already discussed. I warmly welcome that, as I welcome the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill which will, I hope, contain important safeguards for children. I am concerned about the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill and I should be most grateful to the Minister if she could state as early as possible the likely impact of Clause 7 on children of asylum seekers.
	Her Majesty's Government, in their Green Paper, Every Child Matters, acknowledge that the purpose at which they aim with the children's Bill will not be achieved unless the childcare workforce issues are addressed. I hope that your Lordships will therefore permit me to concentrate on the wider agenda of the childcare workforce covered in the children's Green Paper, an area for which the Minister has special responsibility.
	The vacancy rates for child and family social workers nationally stand at about 15 per cent and in London at about 20 per cent. The vacancy rate for residential childcare workers stands at about 11 per cent and in London I believe that the figure is 15 per cent. Those compare with a vacancy rate for teachers of below 1 per cent nationally and 2 per cent in London. That illustrates the challenge that faces us. We are short of midwives, and health visitors are very stretched in their work. Recently at a meeting with the Minister for Children, an early-years educator—a nursery nurse, I believe—said to the Minister that many of her colleagues are leaving to work at Tesco, Waitrose and other retailers because they receive better pay and conditions there.
	We are short of good fosterers. Another 6,000 are required in England and Wales and, despite the Government's efforts, it is hard to imagine how those vacancies can be filled. It is encouraging to learn that there has been a 10 per cent increase in the recruitment of social workers in the past year. It is also encouraging to hear that more social workers are trying to obtain post-qualifying qualifications. It would be helpful to know how the retention rate for social workers now stands.
	The Green Paper, Every Child Matters, was originally envisaged as being cost-neutral. I am pleased to hear that, in certain areas, Her Majesty's Government have decided to invest more in implementing the Green Paper.
	The most important part of the childcare workforce involves parents. We should all be very grateful for the Government's action in promoting parenting. I think, in particular, of the outstanding programmes for supporting parents whose children have committed offences and the positive outcomes in terms of reoffending. I welcome the additional funding that is being made available in that area. However, my noble friend Lord Northbourne is concerned that the £25 million that will be available over three years—I hope that I have that figure correct—will not be adequate to meet the need that exists. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, spoke very eloquently on the issue of parenting schools.
	Every Child Matters examines how we might benefit from positive strategies in other fields by learning from what has been done elsewhere—for example, in teaching and other professions—and applying those lessons to the recruitment and retention of social care professionals. I welcome very warmly what the document says about developing common core training for childcare workers.
	I also welcome the introduction of a children's workforce unit and the acknowledgement that the developmental nature of children needs to be understood by all those who work with children. If that is applied properly, I believe that the group of workers who may most benefit will be residential childcare workers—those who work in children's homes. They value teamwork above almost every other aspect of their work. They feel that they can best assist the children when they work successfully as a team. Sadly, those children are often so troubled that that impacts on the team and can affect the carers' co-operative efforts.
	Such workers also often feel overlooked by other professionals—teachers, social workers and mental health professionals—because of their poor training. They still suffer from the cloud of the sad history of abuse in children's homes, including those in north Wales. Therefore, it is difficult for them to work as part of a wider team. They value teamwork in their own children's homes but it is hard for them to work with other agencies. Therefore, I value what the Green Paper says about encouraging multi-agency work and developing a common culture of childcare. I hope that children's trusts can be a tool by which partnerships are increased with health, education and other agencies, thereby building the confidence of this group of often hard-pressed staff. Eventually, I hope that that will lead to expanding the positive experience of children who go through children's homes.
	We need to do more for the carers—the parents and grandparents. I believe that that was illustrated very strongly to parliamentarians when they listened to Mrs Scholes, who told of her son who recently committed suicide in a young offender institution. He had suffered a long history of sexual abuse and had been through a difficult time. His parents had separated and, following a custody battle, he was taken into care in a children's home. He self-harmed, cutting himself across the face many times. He was sentenced to custody and the court advised a secure children's home. He ended up in a YOI and hanged himself.
	Many people who enter our over-crowded penal system have sad histories of family dysfunction. I very much hope that the wider workforce measures that are coming forward will help to promote improved outcomes for such children. I should appreciate it if, in her response, the Minister could say—as I have not given her warning of this question, perhaps she will write to me—whether her department is putting forward a robust application in relation to the Comprehensive Spending Review for increased remuneration and support for those who work in such areas.

Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior: My Lords, I want to address the issue of keeping Britain's livestock healthy on the basis that healthy livestock in our community leads to a healthy rural economy and forms part of the economic stability and growth of the rural environment.
	We are all aware that in recent years British livestock agriculture has suffered devastating outbreaks of animal disease, such as classical swine fever, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and foot and mouth disease. We are all privy to the dramatic social, economic and environmental consequences that those have brought about. Some are still with us—for example, tuberculosis in our cattle and in badgers.
	The Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food that followed those disease outbreaks made the following recommendations:
	"In view of England's abysmal animal health record in recent years, DEFRA in conjunction with the Industry need to devise and implement a comprehensive animal health strategy".
	I believe we all agree with that. It raises the obvious question of what must be done to implement the recommendation.
	The lessons learnt from the outbreaks to which I have just referred have been commented upon in several reports and discussions. However, to my mind, it is paramount that we put in place measures and structures to ensure that those devastations do not occur again. It would be fallacious to imagine that entry into the United Kingdom of highly infectious and contagious diseases will not occur again. The global movement of people, animals and food products is such that it would be miraculous if disease were not to accompany it. I shall give an idea of the scale of the movement. Some 750,000 airline flights land in this country annually, bringing in 72 million passengers annually. Even if a very small proportion of those were to carry infectious disease of one kind or another, we would be in deep trouble.
	The Phillips report on BSE made two important points. One was that,
	"an effective system of animal disease surveillance is a prerequisite to effective control of animal disease".
	The other was that,
	"an effective system of passive surveillance will depend on farmers and their veterinarians having the incentive and the facility for drawing instances of animal disease to the attention of the State Veterinary Service".
	It might be noted that the first case of BSE in cattle was spotted by a veterinary surgeon in general practice.
	A variety of consultative documents resulted from the various inquiries that have been held into the foot and mouth outbreak. They have identified needs for animal health and welfare strategies up and down the country. They advocate a partnership between vets and farmers to deliver them. However, a general problem in livestock farming is its profitability. That is coupled with a major decline in the number of veterinarians visiting farms on a regular basis owing to that reduced profitability. Farmers do much of the veterinary work themselves. This all results in a major reduction in on-farm veterinary work. For example, now only 9.4 per cent of veterinary practitioners' time is spent working on livestock farms, compared with 20 per cent in 1998, which was only a few years ago. This results in a vicious circle in which there are not enough positions available in veterinary practices to accommodate people wishing to be large animal practitioners, incomes are lower, work is harder and often entails longer hours than those in companion animal work. Nevertheless, large animal practice work is still much in demand by new veterinary graduates, especially by women, if they can find it.
	The State Veterinary Service has an important role to play in surveillance and delivering good animal health. We are aware of a decline over recent years in its personnel numbers, as was indicated in the foot and mouth outbreak. The implications are clear. We need greatly to enhance its manpower numbers. The way forward may well be, as envisaged by Defra, for the State Veterinary Service to become a Next Steps executive agency. That will mean improved accountability through the clear separation of responsibility for policy and delivery, as recommended in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, on delivering government policies in rural England. If that is to be the case, adequate funding for manpower and services must be available for this new concept.
	How do we change the situation so that we have a healthy livestock industry in this country rather than one threatened by disease? The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recently published its report Vets and Veterinary Services. It put forward many of the needed developments. An important comment is that all in livestock agriculture should take responsibility for championing animal health and welfare. An example of that is the National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS), which is an independent body of, at present, 40 veterinary practitioners who formed a sentinel practice network in 1995. It regularly collects information and dispenses it to other veterinary practices and the press, both nationally and locally. This is an example of the profession helping itself, rather than going cap in hand and asking for funds for this to be done. It is an important development. The Commons committee has suggested that the work should be boosted by inputs from Defra and other organisations connected with agriculture.
	The need for surveillance is exemplified by the sea of livestock diseases around us, some of which are transmissible to man. A recent example is the highly pathogenic avian flu epidemic that struck the Netherlands. Prompt attention by the European authorities in Belgium, Denmark and Germany stamped out that disease. Fortunately, it did not reach this country, although it may well have done.
	A constant theme throughout the lessons learned from inquiries is the need for research, more veterinarians in research and more veterinary research. My noble friend Lord Selborne, who is not in his place at present, chaired a committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. It produced a very important report which strongly emphasised the importance of getting more veterinary research into veterinary schools. I am happy to say that, several years after that report was published—much delayed but nevertheless it has been published—£25 million has been made available over a period of five years to boost veterinary research, training and teaching in the veterinary schools. That is a most welcome shot in the arm. But it is important to recognise that that should not be the end of the support and that it should continue for a number of decades.
	There are certain areas in which research is particularly important, such as diagnostic tests to allow for rapid diagnosis of animal disease instead of having to send specimens through the mail. Another example is the nature of improved vaccines; vaccines that will produce life-long immunity to important diseases such as foot and mouth disease. The need for such vaccines is urgent since never again should we approach disease control with the only option being the slaughter of tens of thousands of animals.
	Preparedness for the unusual is vitally important. We know little of why disease entities suddenly appear. An example of course is the recent SARS epidemic out of China into Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world. But there are likely to be more—coming we do not know when or how—as the agents rearrange their genetic make up and take advantage of a human or animal niche to proliferate.
	As I have said before in this House, the price of freedom from these diseases is eternal vigilance.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I beg to move that further debate on the Motion for an humble Address be now adjourned.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	[The Sitting was suspended from 1.37 to 2 p.m. for Judicial Business and to 3 p.m. for Public Business.]

Assistance for Visually Impaired Peers

Lord Morris of Manchester: asked the Chairman of Committees:
	What steps have been taken over recent years to help Peers with severe visual impairments in discharging their parliamentary duties; and what further action is being considered.

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, recent improvements have been made to the clarity of documents, including the Order Paper and new format Committee reports. Official documents are also available on the Internet and Intranet, and may be printed at whatever size type is most convenient.
	The physical environment has also been improved including adapted lifts and Braille signs. A survey of the Palace for access and facilities is currently underway and will report in the New Year.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, who is as totally committed as any Member of this House to placing people with sight problems on the same footing as those of us who can access standard print. Is he aware that the European Commission, among many other institutions, already has a transcription centre to transfer printed documents into formats such as large print, electronic, audio and Braille? Are there any plans to provide transcription facilities here in consultation with organisations such as the RNIB to make information available in these other formats for Peers, employees and visitors with visual impairments that make it difficult or impossible for them to access standard print?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his kind words. I pay tribute to him for all the work that I know he has done over many years for people who are visually impaired. I am indeed aware of the facilities provided by the European Commission documentation facility for visually impaired people. There are currently no plans to provide centralised transcription facilities in the House of Lords.
	The House endeavours to respond to demand from individual Members and members of staff with visual impairments to provide them with the appropriate support to allow them to carry out their work. I am of course always willing to receive requests for additional support. In recent years, we have worked closely with the RNIB to make improvements in providing information for visually impaired Members and staff in a suitable format. In addition, the brief guide to the House of Lords is now available in Braille to visitors and work is being done to make the brief guide available in audio format.

Baroness David: My Lords, I am glad that there will be a general review but could whoever is responsible for it pay particular attention to the lighting on steps and stairs, because that is what some of us who are visually impaired find particularly difficult?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I was not aware of the problem with lighting; I will now see what can be done to improve it. I would say only that if noble Lords have problems that they feel should be considered, please come to my office or Black Rod's office and we will see what we can do.

Lord Addington: My Lords, although thanking the noble Lord in advance for the individual reaction that he is taking to disabilities in this House, will he inform us exactly what co-ordination there is between the different types of problems and their solutions within the House? For instance, a good, solid hand rail will help someone who is visually impaired and someone who has movement difficulties.
	What sort of process is there to ensure that ongoing improvements in aids such as voice operation software, which speaks back to you and to which you can speak, can be worked into what is available as the normal package in the House?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I would hope that we will continue to have meetings with the RNIB, as we have had in recent years. I am very happy to meet again if that would help. I am sure that that would lead to the sort of improvements for which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, looks.
	As for co-ordination, again, I would hope that people would come to me if they have suggestions to make. As I said, a survey of the House is under way to consider how not just visually impaired people but all people with a disability can be assisted. I believe that the survey will report early in the New Year, and I hope will provide useful suggestions.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, while accepting that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 does not apply here, does the Chairman of Committees agree that Parliament should as far as possible provide help no less favourable than best practice outside?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: Indeed, my Lords. Although technically speaking the DDA does not apply to the Palace, because of Crown immunity or whatever, we try—I hope we succeed—to fulfil the requirements laid down for us.

Baroness Darcy de Knayth: My Lords, does the Chairman of Committees agree that the in-house transcription mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, would also have the added benefit that it would be useful for those sighted Peers who receive correspondence in Braille from people with disabilities to enable them to carry out their parliamentary duties?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an interesting point. I have not been made aware of problems with Peers receiving material in Braille that needs to be translated. I have been considering the matter the other way round: where text needs to be translated into Braille. It is an interesting point that we should consider translating Braille into text. Translation services are available to us, which I am sure could fulfil that role as well.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, it is one thing for the noble Lord, and the organisation generally, to respond to requests from individual Peers—I am delighted that that happens. However, could the noble Lord be a little more pre-emptive? Is information collected on the number of Members of this House who have a sight problem and what would be their preferred format in which to receive information, if they cannot use the facilities provided?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I do not believe that information is collected in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, describes. As he suggests, we are more reactive than proactive; obviously, we do not want to make available facilities that are not required, because of the expense that goes with that.

Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I occasionally find myself very embarrassed going down the staircase from the Committee Rooms? When I start, there is no one there. By the time I have got down, the whole staircase has been blocked by my being so slow. It is the going down which is the problem for people with bad eyesight—with one eye, and so on. As the noble Lord asked for suggestions, I let him have my view.

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, perhaps I may suggest that the noble Lord uses the lifts, which now—many of them, anyway—have what some noble Lords find annoying: this voice which tells you at what floor you are.

Abandoned Vehicles

Baroness Byford: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What action they have taken to reduce the number of abandoned vehicles in England.

Lord Whitty: My Lords, the Government take very seriously the problems posed by abandoned vehicles. We are taking a number of initiatives to reduce their incidence. We have enabled local authorities to remove such vehicles more quickly by reducing the statutory notice period for removal and giving them wheel-clamping powers. We are introducing continuous registration in January 2004, and will ensure provision of free take-back and treatment for all end-of-life vehicles by January 2007.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. Is he not disappointed that the number of abandoned vehicles is very much on the rise? London continues to have the highest number, which increased by 84,000 in 2000–01. More worrying is the position of Yorkshire and Humber, where the number of abandoned vehicles has increased by 54 per cent, and the eastern area, where there has been a 47 per cent increase. How does the Minister expect the police to cope with that when the Home Office's own figures of 17th November reported that rural crime had trebled since 1980?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, any relationship to rural crime is caused by entirely different social factors. The increase in abandoned cars is largely explicable by the drastic fall in scrap metal prices. One gets virtually nothing for a scrapped car. For that reason, and because of the non-registration and illegal driving of cars, there has been a significant increase. The combination of the greater powers that we have already given local authorities to remove abandoned cars, better co-ordination between authorities and, shortly, continuous registration will place responsibility on owners and give local authorities and police more powers.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, I apologise for adding a United Kingdom dimension to the Question. Is the noble Lord aware that the price of scrapping a vehicle at my local scrapyard in Alloa is £30 plus the keys? Does he agree that under the new regulations at least an extra £50 will be required? Does he further agree that the likelihood of dumping in the countryside, whether in England or Scotland, will increase so long as the last user must pay at least £80, which, in the case of a banger, may be more than was originally paid for the vehicle?

Lord Whitty: Yes, my Lords. Not long ago, people paid you for your car, but now you must pay them to take it and give them access to it if it is revivible. The economics have changed. The end-of-life vehicle directive will also create a further responsibility and a cost. Continuous registration will require the last registered owner to take that responsibility, and, from 2007, the responsibility will be on the producer. We have a two-stage programme to deal with the fundamentals of the problem. In the mean time, we have given local authorities more powers.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, most abandoned vehicles that I come across do not have many wheels, if any, and some have been set on fire. What is the point of allowing local authorities to clamp such cars?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, the back streets that my noble friend frequents are perhaps not a great case in point. Such powers would be somewhat belated there. Nevertheless, in some places there are abandoned cars in perfectly good condition but which the alleged owner is not prepared to remove. Under previous regulations, we had very little leverage in such situations. Clamping helps in those cases and when cars are abandoned on private land.

Lord Marlesford: My Lords, is the Minister aware that abandoned cars are merely one particularly objectionable form of litter? Litter is increasing hugely on our roads, particularly on trunk roads, which are the responsibility of local authorities, which simply do not do their job. Would it not be simple for the Highways Agency to clear up the roads that local authorities have failed to clear up and send them the bill?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, I doubt it, as there is a clear demarcation between Highways Agency roads and local authority roads. A local authority is responsible for keeping all its roads clear and in reasonable condition. Although the noble Lord has been concerned about the issue for some time, statistics indicate that roadside litter has improved—though it is still a serious problem is some parts of the country. I am not sure that the problem could be dealt with under the powers to deal with abandoned cars, although strictly speaking they are litter, too.

Earl Attlee: My Lords, the SORN regulations have been in place for some time. How many prosecutions have been initiated under them?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is a very good question. I shall write to the noble Earl. Although the SORN regulations are helpful where there are records, they are not particularly helpful in cases where a car is not registered. That is why continuous registration and placing responsibility on the last known, reported and registered owner are an important improvement.

Lord Monson: My Lords, further to the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, approximately what proportion of abandoned cars have been stolen by yobs and set on fire for fun? Lincolnshire is full of such burnt-out wrecks.

Lord Whitty: My Lords, I cannot give an overall figure. Most abandoned cars are faintly serviceable and therefore not burnt out. I am afraid that information on the number of wheels on such cars is beyond my statistical records.

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, tracing the previous owner of an abandoned vehicle, making him liable, as the law says, and extracting money from him to remove the vehicle and have it destroyed is likely to be costlier than disposing of the vehicle in the first place and likely to lead to an unreasonable delay. How do the Government intend to handle that dilemma?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, tracing the previous owner does not stop a local authority removing a car and disposing of it after the due notice period. Much of the cost of that would be met under the system of continuous registration by the previous registered owner. We cannot have a situation where the last traceable owner says, "I sold it in a pub and it is no longer my responsibility". The fact that the alleged new owner had not registered the car can no longer be used as an excuse by the previous owner.

Lord Swinfen: My Lords, the Minister said that the owners of abandoned vehicles were not prepared to remove them. What, then, is the point of clamping them?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, in certain circumstances, it is clear that an abandoned car is worth something and that at some point, therefore, the owner will return to collect it. The authorities will have to use their discretion in deciding whether to tow away a car or clamp it. It will depend on their view of the nature of the offence and the value of the car. If the owner wants it back, he will have to pay the unclamping fee and a fine.

Viscount Simon: My Lords, what happens when a vehicle has apparently been abandoned but yet has current vehicle excise duty?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, it is still an abandoned car, but it is taxed. If the car has a tax disc, there will be a record of the owner, who will be liable.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, are the Government considering altering the current situation whereby, if a car is abandoned on private land, particularly farming land, the cost of removal lies with the landowner, whereas if one is abandoned in a street it is a local authority matter?

Lord Whitty: In some respects, my Lords, in that we have recently consulted on reducing, from 15 days to five, the period of notice to landowners in which they might object to a local authority going on to the land to remove a car itself. Although there has been opposition to the reduction, most local authorities are in favour of it, as are some landowners. We will decide whether to proceed with it very shortly.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, who is liable if a car has been stolen and then considered abandoned? If the police have been notified of the theft, who is responsible?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, if the police have been notified of the theft, the owner would not be responsible so long as the theft was reported prior to the car being found abandoned.

Carers: Rights and Entitlements

Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I remind your Lordships that today is carers' rights day.
	The Question was as follows:
	To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that carers are aware of their rights and entitlements.

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Government are pleased to be supporting Carers UK in promoting carers' rights day 2003. My honourable friends the Ministers for community and for disabled people will be launching this year's event this evening.
	As my noble friend knows, the Government, working with the public, voluntary and private sectors, have made major improvements to carers' entitlements and knowledge of their rights. Carers' rights day will help to ensure that even more carers receive the support available to them in the demanding work that they do.

Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply and am happy to acknowledge the huge progress that has been made for carers in recent years. However, my noble friend will know that, in spite of two Acts of Parliament, most carers are still unaware of their right to an assessment of their community care needs and that, therefore, too many of them are not getting one.
	Does my noble friend think that it would be helpful to review the performance assessment framework that local authorities use, to see whether we are measuring the right outcomes for carers? The key seems to be to change the behaviour and attitudes of local authorities, especially social services departments, so that they recognise what carers need.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that there are still problems and that more must be done. Work is in hand in my department to develop a measure of carers' assessments and their outcomes, so that it can be used to monitor a council's performance. Discussions are in progress with the Social Care Institute for Excellence to develop a good practice component to assessments on the Department of Health carers' website.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, one of the few bright spots in the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill were the amendments secured by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, regarding assessments for carers, when the person for whom they cared left hospital. Does the Minister's response mean that those assessments will also be included in the performance assessment that he outlined? Those rights came into effect this October, and it will be important to monitor and assess them.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I am sure that that will be examined, as part of the work being done in the department.

Lord Laming: My Lords, what are the Government doing to highlight the special needs of the growing number of young people who are, sometimes, the principal carer in the family to ensure that their needs are identified and that they are given proper support in the formative years of their life?

Lord Warner: My Lords, young carers are in a difficult situation. The Government have been working to improve the support that is given to them. That work will continue.

Lord Tebbit: My Lords, have the Government anything in mind for improving the supply of professional carers? Has the Minister anything in mind for improving the facilities for offering training to family members who act as carers? Frequently, such people have no training and no idea of what their responsibilities may be, in the case of a family member who is, perhaps, injured. When that person leaves hospital, the situation comes upon the carer suddenly. What help do the Government have in mind?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Government have hugely increased the amount of money available for health and social care, which has led to a large increase in the number of staff who would be described as professional carers in the sense in which the noble Lord uses the term.
	Social services, in particular, work to help family members who care for people at home and to provide the advice and support necessary in those circumstances.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, my question follows on from that asked by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. Does the Minister think that it is the right of carers to be taught safe lifting and handling techniques, if they care for somebody with mobility problems?

Lord Warner: My Lords, that is all part of the assessment done by social services, when they come to examine the needs of a person with a disability or condition that needs care support in the home. In their assessment, they will take into account the ability of an informal carer to cope.

Baroness Howells of St Davids: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is aware that more than 300,000 carers miss out on claiming the carer's allowance because they do not know about it. Does the Minister think that social services departments should be more proactive in encouraging carers to claim?

Lord Warner: My Lords, we know that there is a problem, but there has been a huge increase in the number of people who claim the allowance. If last year's experience is anything to go by, carers' rights day will help improve that number.
	Responsibility for the carer's allowance rests with the Department for Work and Pensions. It will bring in better claim packs for those benefits in order to simplify the claiming process. The Government will continue to work with councils and the voluntary sector to improve take-up.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the arrangements for social security payments for adults caring for young people with behaviour problems are so complex that it is almost impossible for them to receive their entitlement? I have been lobbied by someone who has two children with identical needs but cannot get the same arrangements for them.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I do not claim to be an expert in the area, but I shall look into the matter and write to the noble Baroness.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, as someone who has only recently become a carer, may I bring up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about people leaving hospital? The person whom I look after left hospital just before 1st October, so the arrangements did not apply. Is it now the case that each person who is to look after someone leaving hospital is given a note about their rights and entitlements? I had no idea that I had any rights or entitlements; I may not have.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I shall examine the noble Baroness's circumstances and see whether she was dealt with appropriately. I shall write to her.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, it is welcome that the carer's allowance has been extended to people over retirement age. However, because of the financial rules, it is an incredibly complicated process, taking in pension arrangements, the minimum income guarantee and so on. I am delighted to hear the Minister say that the Department for Work and Pensions is looking into it and will send out new information.
	That is all very well from the point of view of administrators. The important thing is that it should be read and understood by the recipients. That has not always been the history of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I recall that the Department for Work and Pensions has a good record of subjecting its guidance to the scrutiny of the Plain English Campaign.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, is there, in accordance with the principles of e-government, a website that carers can log on to, input details of their circumstances and get information about their entitlements? If there is, will the Minister give us the URL?

Lord Warner: My Lords, a number of websites is available to carers. They have been developed with Carers UK and other voluntary organisations. I am not familiar with all the websites of the Department for Work and Pensions. I shall look into the matter and write to the noble Lord.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, is there a mechanism in the noble Lord's department for recognising, when a person is assessed for health needs, that a child may be involved in caring for that person and for flagging up that fact with other departments, without breaching confidentiality with the patient? Is that an aim of the Green Paper? Is the Minister aware of any current mechanism for that?

Lord Warner: My Lords, I am not aware of any mechanisms in the department, but I would have thought that that was a matter for local social services departments, in assessing the circumstances of a carer.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern: My Lords, can the Minister give us an estimate of the number of young people in England and Wales or the United Kingdom who are carers?

Lord Warner: My Lords, I do not have the number immediately available, but I know that it is available. I will be happy to write to the noble and learned Lord.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, may I take the opportunity to inform the House that I will be attending a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday 9th December? Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

Business of the House: Thursday, 18th December

Lord Grocott: My Lords, I should like to make the usual comment about the last day before the Recess; that is, Thursday 18th December. The usual channels have agreed that the House should sit at 11 o'clock, with Starred Questions as first business and with no break at lunch.

Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill [HL]

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend Part 1 of the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 to make further provision concerning the Public Prosecution Service established by that Act; to impose a new duty on certain criminal justice organisations in Northern Ireland in relation to human rights standards; to make provision consequential on the dissolution of the Juvenile Justice Board; to amend the law relating to bail in Northern Ireland; to provide for the transfer of certain prisoners from Northern Ireland to England and Wales; to amend Section 103 of the Terrorism Act 2000; to provide for driving while disqualified to be an arrestable offence in Northern Ireland; to re-enact, with amendments, Sections 79 to 81 of the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 and to make further provision about court security officers in Northern Ireland; and to enable barristers in Northern Ireland to enter into contracts for the provision of their services; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Baroness Amos.)
	On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Administration and Works

Information

Refreshment

Works of Art

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I beg to move the four Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper en bloc. Administration and Works
	Moved, That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords together with the Chairman of Committees be named of the committee;
	L. Cope of Berkeley
	L. Craig of Radley
	B. Darcy de Knayth L. Dixon
	L. Grocott
	Bp. Guildford
	L. Kirkham
	B. McFarlane of Llandaff
	E. Mar and Kellie
	L. Roper
	L. Shaw of Northstead
	B. Wilkins;
	That the committee have leave to report from time to time.
	Information
	Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider information and communications services, including the Library and the Parliamentary Archives, within financial limits approved by the House Committee;
	That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the committee;
	L. Avebury
	L. Baker of Dorking (Chairman)
	L. Brougham and Vaux
	L. Burnham
	E. Erroll
	B. Gale
	B. Gardner of Parkes
	B. Goudie
	L. Haskel
	L. Mitchell
	L. Rodger of Earlsferry
	E. Sandwich
	L. Smith of Clifton;
	That the committee have leave to report from time to time.
	Refreshment
	Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to advise on the refreshment services provided for the House, within financial limits approved by the House Committee;
	That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the committee;
	L. Borrie
	L. Burnham
	B. Fookes (Chairman)
	L. Grocott
	B. Harris of Richmond
	L. Palmer
	B. Pitkeathley
	L. Redesdale
	B. Rendell of Babergh
	Ly. Saltoun of Abernethy
	B. Strange
	L. Wade of Chorlton;
	That the committee have leave to report from time to time. Works of Art
	Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to administer the House of Lords Works of Art Collection Fund; and to consider matters relating to works of art in the House of Lords, within financial limits approved by the House Committee;
	That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the committee;
	L. Bernstein of Craigweil
	V. Chandos
	L. Cobbold
	L. Crathorne (Chairman)
	L. Eames
	L. Luke
	L. Redesdale
	L. Rees
	L. Rees-Mogg
	L. Tordoff
	B. Trumpington
	B. Warwick of Undercliffe;
	That the committee have leave to report from time to time.—(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

Debate resumed.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, the centrepiece of what I have to say concerns top-up fees, which, clearly, are among the most important issues to be resolved in this Parliament. They are important because it is unarguably necessary to secure more resources for our universities if we are ever to return universities to their previous high international standing. There can be no doubt about the need. Academic salaries in Britain are quite disgracefully low. As the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said, the student/staff ratio has doubled from 9:1 to 18:1 in the past decade. Student per capita funding has decreased by 37 per cent. State contribution per student today is £1,125 per annum, which is nothing like the full cost of approximately £4,000. By contrast, Australia spends 30 per cent more per student and the United States spends nearly three times as much.
	The Government are to be congratulated on being both courageous and realistic in their decision to tackle the problem, which has been shelved by previous governments for far too long. Their plans are surely a step in the right direction. If we accept the premise, as I do, that higher education is no longer for the few, but is necessary for the many—not least for international economic competitive reasons—we must encourage not just a variety of routes, such as part-time or distance learning, in order that students of all ages are able to achieve higher education, but even more importantly, additional ways of financing students, including contributions from the students themselves. That is where so-called top-up fees come in, which would be payable, not at the time but after graduation, through an income-related repayment scheme.
	Of course, one has sympathy for the university students of today and tomorrow and the potential debt that they will have accumulated when they graduate. But the majority will earn considerably more than the average wage. The deferral of any up-front fee payment until after graduation will be a significant help to all students. The anticipated delays and exceptions proposed for those on low earnings before repayment clocks in may need to be increased, but are undoubtedly a considerable and significant concession.
	Although it is a novel idea in this country, it is at the heart of the much better-funded United States university system, and is part of changes taking place in Australia to enhance the quality of universities and to enhance access to those universities. That is a further and highly legitimate factor in pursuit of the Government's important objective of "inclusiveness". Those from deprived backgrounds who qualify should—indeed must—have access to adequate means-tested maintenance grants of a sufficient size on which to live during their studies.
	I do not believe that that has to be done by a government loan. That is not the way in which it is done in Australia or the United States. If we follow their examples, surely we need to give universities more—not less—freedom to run their own affairs. By all accounts, the US has the most successful university system and the most highly paid academics. It is also the most competitive and the most variously funded. Access is provided for as well.
	Certainly, its Ivy League universities manage to apply a means-test approach to admission; that is, only after acceptance do they decide how much the student should contribute personally, with the balance being found from bursaries or other sources. Clearly, as there are no fewer than 39 US universities, each with an endowment of 13 billion dollars, it will be some time before we can compete at that level. But we must start now.
	There are other ways in which we could make our system more flexible. Why, in principle, should not universities have the freedom to charge variable fees? As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, it happens with part-time courses. As a previous deputy chairman of the Open University, I know that exactly the same thing applies there. Why should we not apply a more market-based approach to over-subscribed courses, such as media studies, to enable some cross-subsidy to less popular but much needed subjects?
	The trouble with our "system" is that the Government have become too involved with the minutiae of how universities are run. There are many complaints of undue bureaucracy and of endless offers in "biscuit tins", as one vice-chancellor far from the Russell Group described it. Money is offered for specific government objectives and universities are lured off their own agenda in order to qualify for a little desperately needed extra money.
	That is why I cannot endorse the notion of a director of "fair access". Setting up yet another expensive statutory body to judge whether a university has done enough to attract more disadvantaged students is both insulting and further evidence of the Government's wish to interfere with the independence of universities. There are surely less expensive ways of achieving that highly desirable objective, not least to trust universities, in a rather different environment from many years ago, to deliver. Already the statutory bodies with which universities need to do business cost nearly £1 billion per annum and employ 1,500 staff.
	All that represents an added and avoidable burden on the taxpayer, who has many other even more pressing educational needs to finance. As political parties know well, there is certainly a limit to the level of taxation that the electorate will tolerate. If we are looking at the many priorities for government, more resources for schools rightly is top of the agenda. Indeed, I would argue that the most vital component of the success of the Government's higher education proposals is to ensure that schools in deprived areas are equipping those students with university potential to achieve the necessary qualifications.
	I warmly commend the Government for the many initiatives—Sure Start and others—that aim to compensate disadvantaged children from backgrounds where learning is not valued. Universities, too, are playing an important part here. They are opening their premises to visits from schools, with university students going into schools to encourage those children with high potential to aim higher. That is yet another reason why we need to concentrate more resources at school level.
	But one has to say that, so far, these efforts have not seemed to be as successful as one would have hoped. If one takes the deprived area schools in inner London, for example, it is inevitable that children there will need the most inspiring and dedicated teachers—and more of them per school—if there is to be any real hope of success in this direction. I would argue, as I did when I was a member of the Inner London Education Authority some years ago, that as these schools need double the staff effort and dedication of, say, schools in the leafy suburbs, then surely the answer is to ensure that they get double the resources and double the number of teachers.
	I believe that there are plans to open four new schools in inner London, but I am concerned that, important though the initiative may be, it will not fully meet the Government's otherwise admirable objectives. More action and less bureaucracy is needed and I hope that, when she responds to the debate, the Minister will be able to reassure me that this will happen.
	I may seem to have ended at a point some way from my opening concern with higher education, but this is all a seamless web. The plain fact is that, if we are to find the resources for the vital early stages of a child's education, then it cannot be wrong to expect those lucky enough to benefit from a high quality tertiary education—and they certainly do—to pay back some of the fruits of that benefit. That is the social justice of the case for so-called "top-up" fees.

Lord Sewel: My Lords, one of the difficulties associated with taking part in the debate on the humble Address is to decide on which subject to focus. Given my own interests, I have had to make a choice between rural affairs, where a number of important policy advances have been made, with more to come, on which I could say some warm words, and education—in particular higher education—where I am afraid that those words would be less warm. I have chosen higher education.
	I start by declaring an interest as the senior vice-principal of the University of Aberdeen. I should make clear that I do not speak for the University of Aberdeen on this subject; I am speaking purely for myself and myself alone. I hope also that, on this topic, we shall not have any nonsense that those noble Lords who come from Scotland should not participate in this area of policy. As we have a single labour market for academics and increasingly a single market for students, whatever happens in England has quite direct implications for Scottish higher education. I think that we have a justifiable interest.
	One of the good developments of the past few weeks and months has been the general recognition that higher education is under-funded, and that is to be welcomed. If we are to maintain—actually, I think the word is now "regain"—our world position of excellence in higher education, then we have to look at increased funding for such education and a new funding stream. There is no doubt about that.
	Many aspects of the Government's approach to the funding of higher education are soundly based. It is right that the main beneficiaries of higher education should be expected to make a contribution. It is right that that contribution should be in the form of a requirement to pay following graduation rather than the payment of up-front fees. It is also right that the contribution made should be income-contingent. I believe that, among serious commentators, there is general agreement on those three elements. However, it is when we go beyond that point that the difficulties and the scope for criticism arise.
	Let us look at variability. The Government and the Prime Minister have placed great weight on the need to provide for variability in setting fees. What we know is that the Government have announced that the maximum fee will be limited to £3,000 per year, a figure which is to stand for some years. The higher education sector has responded to that by declaring that, basically, all universities will charge that fee for all their courses. So a problem with variability arises at the very beginning because it assumes that, some way down the track, the cap will be lifted and the opportunity for universities to charge higher fees for their courses will be given. It is important that the model is correct from the beginning, no matter what are the particular figures agreed on fees at the start.
	I am not convinced that students from modest backgrounds—not the poorest backgrounds—will not be influenced in their choice of course or university by the size of the fee that they will be expected to repay. That is wrong and we ought not to do anything that could lead in such a direction.
	I turn now to income contingency, which in its concept and principle is absolutely right. However, the Government's present proposals are very much a blunt instrument. Basically, a common, universal contribution is to be made, one that is not related to the extent to which the individual graduate benefits from higher education. So the contribution is not directly related to the benefit derived. I illustrate the point by referring to two graduate professions: primary teaching and the law. The primary school teacher will pay as much as the top lawyer, and that is wrong. The Minister may have a partial answer to that, so I shall narrow the example down and look in general at graduates in law.
	Law graduates do not all go on to become top lawyers. Many noble Lords are top legal professionals, but not everyone with a law degree becomes a top lawyer. Some work in community law centres, while some leave the practice of the law, as did my own private secretary, to work for a significant period in the voluntary sector. It is wrong that all those graduates should be expected to pay the same level of fee because the financial benefit or return is different.
	There is another way of dealing with the problem, one that addresses the three principles on which all participants in the debate are agreed. In fact it would result in a closer correlation between the amount paid and the benefit derived; that is, through a graduate income tax. I read somewhere that the Government were moving away from such a solution because they had evidence that those from more affluent backgrounds were reluctant to contribute towards the higher education of those who chose to work in less financially rewarding careers. I think that that is a very good reason to go down the graduate income tax route; it is a strong argument in favour of it. I also believe that a graduate income tax, rather than the proposals currently before us, is closer to the core values and beliefs of my party.

Lord Monson: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, would he explain how the graduate income tax would work for graduates who leave to work abroad?

Lord Sewel: My Lords, the answer to that is: how would the Government's proposals work for those who leave to work abroad?

Earl Peel: My Lords, despite the fact that agriculture and rural affairs did not get much of a mention in the gracious Speech, it does not mean that there is not a great deal of activity in that quarter. I am glad to say that farming fortunes have recently picked up a little, but how sustainable that will be remains to be seen. However, it is one thing for the farming community to try to cope with an unprofitable industry, but it is quite another when it tries to do so in the knowledge that the very structure in which farming has operated for so long is about to undergo a sea change.
	I declare an interest as an owner of land which is subjected to several tenancies. However, I certainly subscribe to the view that most farmers recognise fully the need for a radical change in the subsidy system. It is no longer tenable for taxpayers' money to be used to support production and if farmers are to continue to receive support it is right and proper for it to be channelled in the direction of the improvement of the environment. So I welcome the principles behind Herr Fischler's proposals for decoupling support in his mid-term review.
	But I believe it is imperative that, given the degree of flexibility open to member states in how they implement the proposals, Defra must not rush headlong into decisions that will affect the future of farming without very carefully considering the options.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said—I take this opportunity to welcome the noble Lord back to your Lordships' House and congratulate him on his second maiden speech—the Government appear to be concentrating on two scenarios so far as concerns the new single payment. One scenario revolves around the individual historic entitlement calculated on what the farmer has received during the relevant period; and the second is a regional average payments system which, broadly speaking, means what it says.
	We are led to believe—and I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is in his place—that the Government are leaning towards the first scenario which, on the face of it, may appear the simplest to operate and the most equitable. But any farmer who changed his business operations during the relevant period on which the payment will be based could be in great difficulties and reliant on an untested—and almost certainly under-funded—appeals system if he is to receive a reasonable payment. I believe—I may be wrong—that some 1 million acres could fall within this category of uncertainty. I therefore suggest to the Government that if they pursue this route there could be very considerable difficulties ahead.
	I ask the Government to consider also the case of a farmer who, encouraged by the new mood in agriculture, abandoned his intensive operations in favour of an extensive system of production geared towards environmental gain. However, because he did so at the end of the entitlement period but was still extensively farming during the entitlement period, under the new single farm payment he could receive up to, say, £600 a hectare. Compare this to his neighbour who converted to a more benign system just before the entitlement period. He may qualify for only, say, £100 per hectare. They are both farming in a responsible and sustainable fashion but the enlightened farmer who converted earlier is penalised to the benefit of the less entitled farmer who converted late. This cannot be an equitable solution. Once again it demonstrates the dangers ahead for the Government if they pursue this option.
	The other method—that of regional average payments—remains a popular alternative with some. However, this, too, has its shortcomings. I believe that, as a broad brush calculation, more than 20 per cent of farmers would lose more than 20 per cent of their support. So, again, this option also produces problems.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, pointed out, two hybrid schemes are available. I urge the Government to consider seriously the one that broadly combines historic payments for animals and regional average payments for crops. This is not the time to go into details but this option could lead to a more sustainable system, which is exactly what the industry needs during this time of uncertainty.
	Perhaps I may now say a few words about the recently published report of the noble Lord, Lord Haskins. In my view, anything that is designed to streamline the operations within Defra and to reduce the present confusion must be welcomed, and I am sure that there is much to be welcomed in the noble Lord's report.
	I wholeheartedly applaud the idea of integrating the landscape and recreational dimensions of the Countryside Agency's responsibilities with the nature conservation role of English Nature. They are all inextricably bound up. Indeed, I remember that when we last discussed this issue—which I believe was back in 1996—I spoke in support of the amalgamations, which of course eventually took place in Scotland and Wales but not in England.
	I would go further than the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Haskins. I can see no logical reason why the new agency should not embrace the responsibilities of promoting the economic viability of rural businesses in addition to the environmental stewardships. I say this because the objectives are all interwoven. Without a healthy, profitable rural sector the management of the countryside and all the sustainable conservation objectives that are so important to so many of us simply will not happen.
	I end by saying to the Government that, despite my enthusiasm for much of what the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, recommends, I urge caution. The implications of the mid-term review in all its guises, along with the implementation of Sir Don Curry's level 1 and level 2 schemes, are truly profound as far as changes in the countryside are concerned. Between them they are likely to produce one of the most significant changes that agriculture has experienced for some time.
	There is much anticipation and there is hope. But there is also fear and confusion. No matter what option the Government finally decide on in terms of single farm payments, there will be huge uncertainty both within the farming industry and Defra itself. I strongly recommend that any changes to the department and its agencies should not be contemplated until such time as everyone is ready and the effects of the mid-term review have been allowed to settle. There are some good proposals here, but I urge the Government not to run before they can walk.

Lord Mitchell: My Lords, as someone who has had a substantial student loan, paid it back and lived to tell the tale, I should like to make my contribution by putting a real life perspective into the current debate.
	When 5 per cent of the population went to university, the state could well afford to finance them. Now 50 per cent of our young people aspire to higher education—and this must be a good thing—but the bald truth is that the Government cannot afford to fund the complete tuition fee. Plus we must face the fact that, like so much else in our country, our universities have been crumbling due to inadequate finance. Truth be told, even our best universities are losing out in the global academic hierarchy.
	When I was 21, I went to the United States to study for a master's degree in business administration. In those days no such degree was available in this country, and besides I wanted to see the world. I was accepted by Columbia University in New York city. I left England with £500 in my pocket, realising that not only would I have to pay my tuition fees but also that I would have to find money to live.
	American universities work hard—harder than I had ever known. In my case, nine until six every day; one week off for Christmas and only a few days for Easter. But, despite this, I still had to work to eat and for four nights a week I worked as a waiter, living on tips. Even so, I could not afford my tuition fees.
	In those days the tuition fees were 8,000 US dollars per term. The university helped a little but, for the bulk of the cost, I had to borrow. I came back to the UK in 1966 with a loan equalling 15,000 US dollars. We were given a three month settling-in time and then the repayment schedule kicked in. Unlike the current proposals, no consideration was taken of future income; there was no respite until salaries reached a pre-set level; you had a loan and you had to pay it back. My American colleagues were receiving salaries of around 12,000 US dollars per annum, but I came home to the UK, where my first job paid £750 per year.
	Your Lordships can imagine how hard it was to survive. One year later, the pound was devalued against the dollar, the effect of which was that the principal that I had begun to reduce was increased in sterling terms even above its original level. I learnt an important business lesson—never have a foreign currency mismatch between principal and income. But I survived. To me that loan was never a debt: it was an investment. Was it worth while? Yes it was, thousands of times over. What did it teach me? That all that hard work got me my masters degree, but also that anything is possible if you set your mind to it. For me, it was a good lesson. I have no hesitation in saying that.
	The Government are right to say that students should make a contribution. They are also right to say that different universities should be able to charge different levels of top-up fees, but that subject will run and run and I will not go on about it any longer.
	I now turn to my real education passion, which is e-learning, and here I must declare my interest as a trustee of the eLearning Foundation and that my employer supplies computer services to schools. E-learning is a great British success story. It is the process whereby children—as well as university students and adults—are able to learn either at school or at home using computers, not as a replacement for classroom teaching but as a complementary aid. The eLearning Foundation was set up two years ago with the simple remit to ensure that every child in this country has access to computer learning with the ultimate objective that all children should have their own computers, in their rucksacks, just as they have their pens and pencils. Our new chair is my right honourable friend Estelle Morris.
	Today, over one million children go to schools that are associated with the eLearning Foundation. The Department of Education and Skills has been hugely supportive of e-learning in general and my foundation in particular. I must thank my noble friend the Minister and the Secretary of State for their wholesome backing. The department's commitment to e-learning includes £280 million of e-learning credits; £195 million in laptops for teachers; and a £287 million commitment to ensure that all schools will have broadband capacity by 2006. The Government's target is for one computer for every eight children in primary schools and one computer for every five children in secondary schools by 2005. In my opinion that is too timid. In a knowledge based world we need to have higher aspirations.
	There remains a massive problem associated with the so-called digital divide—that middle class children have computers at home and poor children tend not to. We simply cannot have our most disadvantaged children missing out on the very skills that could ensure their employment prospects in the future.
	Does e-learning matter? Is it all worth while? I have visited schools in socially excluded areas that employ state-of-the-art technology, and the effect is dramatic. Hard evidence is now replacing anecdote that schools that embrace IT improve their results in SATS and GCSE. Staff and students are better motivated, school pride is enhanced and parents are becoming more involved. Most importantly, those young people are going into the world with 21st century skills. What we see for those lucky ones must be available to all.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, no one can accuse this Government of not consulting widely in and on the countryside. They cannot claim to be unaware of the problems and needs of rural communities. The Curry report, the Haskins report and the three inquiries into the mishandling of the foot and mouth outbreak, all stress that rural areas have many problems that are different from those of towns. I remind the House of our family farming interest. The conclusions of those consultations, the recommendations of the reports and the much-vaunted concentration on joined-up government should combine to ensure that policy takes rural factors into account. I fear that that is not so in the gracious Speech.
	Educational reform by this Government includes a great deal of very heavy micromanagement. For example, I am told that the DfES has produced more than 200 pages of detailed "guidance" on how local education authorities should structure their formulae for school funding. It seems fairly obvious that an LEA concerned with several hundred inner-city schools will face rather different pressures and problems from a rural LEA with fewer schools but much greater distances between them. The DfES is "guiding" LEAs to put more and more of their financing into schools using age-weighted pupil units in place of base or school allocations. That militates against the continuing operation of many of our smaller schools, most of which are in rural areas.
	Schools are funded from local sources. They have to conform to national agreements. There is nothing wrong with that one might say, but if the necessary funding for the various government initiatives is not made separately available, it has to be taken from the school's budget. The smaller the school, the higher the ratio of income per pupil and the more difficult it is to pay for them. As recently as 7th November (at col. 552) Hansard contains a Written Answer that admits that government funding is not sufficient to pay increases to teachers on the upper pay scale who moved to point 2 in 2002. Will the Minister tell us how many teachers reached level 2 in 2002 and are therefore now eligible for advancement to level 3 but for whom there is no funding? Will she also clarify whether the Government intend to fund the cost of the extra pay each year following the award of a level 1? Small schools may have difficulty finding the money to pay these increases.
	The whole question of funding was touched on succinctly by my noble friend Lady Hanham this morning. Indeed, she referred to the National Audit Office's report condemning the Government and their policies for calling for extra spending and then blaming local government, which is not fair.
	The gracious Speech announces pilot school transport schemes, and I understand that LEAs may be allowed not only to raise existing charges but to introduce them where buses are now free. There are relatively few rural secondary schools and it is normal for older village children to travel more than three miles each way to attend school. Furthermore, primary school rolls are falling all over the country because of the declining birth rate. Government pressure to reduce surplus places allied to the greater linkage of funds with age-weighted pupil units will mean the closure of more village primaries. To charge for school transport, especially for those below the age of 16, will be to discriminate against rural children.
	We await the details of the transport Bill, but I urge the Government to remember that cars are an essential way of life for rural folk. Any integrated transport system should be based on local community needs, especially those of local schools.
	I now turn to housing. Lack of affordable housing is a problem for town and rural dwellers alike. In rural areas, average weekly wages are not only much lower than in urban areas, but the problem is all the more acute. The Government's record is a disgrace. Statistics show that 130,000 or so households are without a permanent home of their own, while at any one time, 750,000 properties stand empty in this country. Of those, 20 per cent are in the public sector. In the rural White Paper of 2000, promises were made that 3,000 affordable houses a year would be built in small settlements. The record shows that that was not achieved. In 1997, some 2,020 were built, but in 2001 that figure had dropped to 1,371. Added to those figures is the fact that between 1997 and 2001, only 20 per cent of affordable housing was rural build. The Countryside Agency report of 2002 stated that public sector and social housing account for 14 per cent of total stock in rural districts, compared with 23 per cent in urban ones. Hopes have been raised, but targets have not been achieved.
	We await the details of the housing Bill. However, I should like at this stage to flag up the concern that was mentioned in an earlier debate about the "seller's pack". That issue is still causing great anxiety.
	I turn to the planning Bill. Two consultation papers are currently out on the draft planning and policy statement PPS7 and on sustainable development in rural areas. Planning authorities should allow limited development to meet local business, community and identified housing needs, particularly in order to maintain the viability and vitality of smaller towns and villages. A positive approach should be taken to improve accessibility and community value of existing facilities such as village pubs, shops, village halls and schools.
	Paragraph 18 of the consultation paper states that the reuse of existing rural buildings is usually preferable to leaving them underused, vacant or derelict—a point which I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in an earlier debate. The rural districts of England contain more than 577,000 businesses which represent 30 per cent of England's total. Agricultural businesses account for 15 per cent of the total in rural districts. One way in which the Government can help current and future businesses is to encourage the spread of broadband or high-speed electronic communication. Currently only 3 per cent of rural businesses have broadband compared with 11 per cent in urban areas.
	I turn now to what was not included in the gracious Speech. There was no hunting Bill. What are the Government's intentions? In another place, in debating the gracious Speech, at col. 338 of the Official Report for 1st December, Mr Alun Michael confirmed that, as the Prime Minister had made clear the previous week, the issue will be dealt with in this Parliament. How will that be achieved when, as has been upheld, the previous Bill impinges on human rights?
	The gracious Speech also did not include a Bill on animal welfare, which has long been promoted by Elliott Morley and long looked for by many outside organisations. My understanding is that a draft Bill will be presented in spring 2004 and brought before Parliament if time allows. I ask the Minister whether there might not be a link between the non-appearance of those two Bills.
	I began by saying that the Government have consulted widely, and it is true. However, the hard reality is that, unless action is taken urgently, agricultural and horticultural businesses will be at the whim of the current thinking of politicians. The Curry report and the Haskins report are both hugely important. The latter looks at the ways in which Defra evolves its policy and reflects how those policy decisions are delivered. Defra distributes more than £1 billion of its total £3 billion in more than 45 agri-environmental schemes. What a lot of people employed unproductively, and what a lot of time and money being spent in bureaucracy and form filling! That really must not continue.
	For the sake of our countryside and our rural businesses, and of course for the long-term conservation of wildlife and habitat, the Government must urgently settle those details. CAP reform, however, is the more important issue. It is of prime importance that we agree how those payments should be made. Should they, as my noble friend asked earlier, be based on an historic, a regional or a hybrid system? What we must not do is burden agricultural businesses with added costs, making them uneconomic compared with other countries. The Government should clearly bear in mind the risk they run of exporting our food production and the effect that that would have on our balance of payments.
	I believe that long-term food security is more important now than in years gone by. This year's June census gives a grim warning: 17,000 farmers and farm workers left the industry in England between 2002 and 2003. Nearly 85,000 have left the farming industry since the Government took office in 1997. I believe that opportunities exist; the development of non-food crops, for example, can bring great advantages. However, the Government's energy policy lacks direction and has failed to supply sufficient fiscal help. There is much to do. I hope that the Government will move from their consulting mode to an action mode.

Lord Puttnam: My Lords, I am required to speak quite briefly, certainly too briefly to do justice to the challenge of achieving a sustainable future for the whole of this country's higher education sector. I should, of course, declare an interest as chancellor of the University of Sunderland. I have apologised in advance to the Minister for the fact that I was not in my place this morning. I chair the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. We arranged to interview new directors this morning and some of them have flown in from overseas. No discourtesy was intended to the House, but I also avoided any discourtesy to prospective candidates for the job.
	Everyone connected with our universities can only be grateful to the Government for acknowledging the hopelessly inadequate level of funding that has been suffered for years. The Government's proposed legislation is undoubtedly well meaning. I find myself in agreement with almost every word the Prime Minister uttered last week in setting out the need for an early Bill. In fact, I disagreed with only two words. Unfortunately, those words were "these proposals". The scale, the nature and the urgency of the problem have already been clearly identified. That is the good news. The bad news is that the proposed remedy in the form of "variable" or "top-up" fees could quickly prove every bit as damaging and divisive as it will over time be seen to be hopelessly inappropriate to the scale and nature of the challenge.
	One of the great benefits I have derived from membership of your Lordships' House is the opportunity that it affords non-politicians such as myself to question former Ministers on their retrospective attitude to the effects of this or that piece of legislation for which they were responsible. In listening to them, I have been struck by a single recurring theme; that is, levels of under-investment that have been found acceptable by successive governments despite certain knowledge that, sooner or later, the piper would have to be paid. Any snapshot of the post-war years serves to highlight our continual failure to address the fundamental inadequacy of our transport infrastructure, our public education system and our health service. I could add to that list at great length, and every example I could offer would strike a resonant chord with one or other Member of your Lordships' House.
	Now we are being asked to turn our minds to higher education funding. Better late than never, some will rightly mutter. But there lies the first and possibly the biggest bear trap. The lack of resources within the sector is so chronic and has been ignored for so long that anything looks like up. Sad to say, many—possibly even most—vice-chancellors have bought a "bill of goods" dressed up as the best or the only game in town. Shame on them; they should know better. There cannot be one of them who sincerely believes that the Bill, when published, will be the solution to the long-term problems of the sector, although a few—a very few—might privately believe that subsequent secondary legislation will enable them to have something close to the funding stream of their dreams. However, they also know that their security will be bought at the cost of undermining and possibly crippling the aspirations of the great majority of students and higher education institutions in this country.
	No, the present proposals will not do. For a start, this entire funding argument is being distorted by an entirely legitimate need for consolidation in the sphere of what I will term "Big Science". I entirely accept the necessity for capital-intensive "centres of excellence" which cannot be generally replicated around the country. These will tend to attract the majority of ambitious young scientists, and, as a realist, I am prepared to live with the distortions to which this concentration of power and money will inevitably lead. But these very particular circumstances do not apply to the vast majority of departments at our universities.
	Irrespective of any assurances you may hear, these proposals will, in short order, lead to the emergence of significant differential fees as, for the very first time, a wholly unwelcome marketplace emerges within our state provision of public education.
	In many parts of the country the very notion of debt is abhorrent, and that attitude is most prevalent in those self-same communities in which this Government have made real inroads in breaking down generations of prejudice—a fear and prejudice that insists that universities are just "not for the likes of us".
	Of those who actively seek the creation of elite, expensive institutions I ask, having graduated with flying colours, do we not want the very brightest and best of our young people seriously to consider a career in the public sector? That being the case, I very much doubt that the mountain of debt that they will be carrying will be much of an encouragement.
	I believe myself to have been born a citizen of a great country. More than anything I want my grandchildren to be citizens of a great country. Surely our sole reason for being in this place is to help make that possible. But I do not believe that this country has much of a future if we fail really to crack this issue of university funding. Having read and heard a great deal, my every instinct tells me that these present proposals which, when fully implemented, will raise some £1.25 billion a year, will prove inadequate to meeting one of the great challenges of this new century. That instinct was supported by an article by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, in The Times this morning in which he said:
	"The reason we seek to broaden access to universities is that only by drawing on the widest pool of talent, from whatever social background, can we achieve for Britain the excellence our economy requires".
	Please note that the Chancellor does not use the words "seeks" or "hopes for", but "requires". To achieve that we have to cast our minds well beyond any half-baked compromises. We need to think big and dig deep, just as are other highly competitive countries, many of which are juggling with these self-same priorities but with far fewer assets with which to address them.
	My own preference, which I shall go into in more detail should the Bill obtain a Second Reading in this House, is a hypothecated graduate tax underpinned by the issue of a higher education bond. I shall suggest that the bond is designed to raise some £20 billion and is underwritten on a 50:50 basis by the Government and the universities themselves collectively. Not only would the sum raised go a long way towards achieving that frequently invoked nirvana, a world-class HE sector, but it would do so in a flexible, equitable and, I hope, sustainable manner.
	If I may, I shall address my final remarks to colleagues in my own party. Not only do I believe that I was born into a great country, I also believe myself to be a member of a great party. Like many of your Lordships I expect to be campaigning for that party in the not too distant future. This Government have much of which they can be justifiably proud, not least in the area of education. It is those achievements I should like to shout from the rooftops. However, I have no idea what I shall answer when asked, as inevitably all of us will be, "Which manifesto commitments will you renege on this time?"
	Perhaps because I am not a lawyer I shall not resort to the kind of semantic evasion I have recently heard offered as a means of wriggling out of our self-created dilemma. Surely all of us in this and another place have an overwhelming interest in promoting trust in our political system, not undermining it.
	In conclusion, my deepest dread is that 20 years from now I shall find myself shuffling down these corridors passing another generation of men and women who express only regret for their missed opportunities, most particularly for the timid and inadequate manner in which they addressed what might well be remembered as the great university funding crisis of 2004.

The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, I was struck by the welcome in the Minister's opening speech—unfortunately, he is not present at the moment—for the area of the gracious Speech that concerned a fairer and more just society. I am sure that is something that the Minister has cherished for some time. It may appear slightly strange for someone in my position to say that the question of what is just and fair may depend on one's own situation.
	I must declare an interest as a farmer and livestock rearer, as I speak on those subjects. I wish to touch on two points: the countryside in general and an issue that specifically concerns Europe. For very many of those involved, one of the attractions of being a farmer or rural landowner is that it has been possible to sustain the impression that a rural life means living a life of independence within your own acres. There was a flexibility to choose what line of production would best suit your situation and your temperament. Farming was regarded as an essential element of the national life, and the "honest toil" celebrated in literature and verse was seen as thoroughly beneficial in taming nature and allowing all kinds of useful things to flourish, although some of the Minister's remarks showed how much that attitude has changed. Many of the ways in which government offered to underpin production left a lot of room to sustain that impression. But in fact, what with the progress of science and with government and EU subsidies and regulation, all of those things have become progressively less and less true, and the public seem to be less and less convinced that money provided to sustain those activities is to their benefit.
	As so ably expressed by my noble friend Lord Peel, I feel that we are now facing a watershed. Most of that air of independence is being swept away and once again the state is taking over. It is perhaps a little difficult to say whether the state should be regarded as Britain or Europe but, whichever it turns out to be, it does not imply a fundamental difference. The state, of course, is taken to be acting on behalf of the people and therefore any rights of the individual that are being diminished are somehow wonderfully increasing the rights of large numbers of others.
	That may seem fairly incontestable when we are dealing with something like access rights, which of course we have seen being enacted on a rather wider basis in Scotland than is proposed in England and Wales. In Scotland it is proposed that access can be exercised anywhere but in the curtilage of a domestic dwelling or school. But, wherever it occurs, it is a diminution of the right of the individual property owner.
	The new philosophy is very much that we should be paid to put on a show for those who wish to escape the harsh realities of their lives and be able to wander curiously in the fresh country air without finding anything that will give them offence.
	There is also a new wave of enthusiasm for community ownership, most easily conceived as community ownership of woodland, but gradually being rolled out into ownership of property, and in most cases receiving handsome financial assistance from public funds. However, there is an awkward question that lies behind the community woodland proposal in particular. Woodlands require management and even those on the scale of the Forestry Commission are currently losing money—in that particular case several million pounds a year. How will things work when there is a burden of losses to be met by the community, perhaps in one year or perhaps in more than one year?
	As many of my noble friends have said, by far the biggest change to our understanding of what constitutes a rural way of life is likely to come from the mid-term review and the complete decoupling of agricultural subsidies from production. As it stands, this appears to be the most likely option offered by the mid-term review of the CAP to be chosen for this country. This seems at first glance to be the most radical simplification of all the myriad forms, returns, permits and applications that the industry could ever conceive and, if that was all, we would all be likely to send up a big cheer.
	However, as many of your Lordships will be aware, coupled with that requirement is a stipulation known as cross-compliance. Certainly, to my knowledge, in Scotland, and more than likely in the remainder of the country too, this will be centred mainly on the requirement for everyone who is receiving the single farm payment to agree to what is termed a "whole farm plan". This will be drawn up to suit the criteria of the administration which will have a fairly pre-conceived idea of what produces the most public good. In the nature of this kind of thing, any desire for innovation or variation from what has been laid down is liable to be acceptable only after considerable persuasion and negotiation. The shape of the countryside will be taken in hand by the Government.
	As someone who has care of and responsibility for animals, I should like briefly to express my thanks to my noble friend Lord Soulsby for flagging up so much our problems with health for animals. I also want to mention a regulation currently being considered in Brussels that has its roots among the public perceptions that I mentioned. It is the proposed regulation for the welfare of animals in transport. It plans to bring in far more onerous criteria than those in the Welfare of Animals in Transport Order 1997, the current rule in this country. Any problems that have arisen have tended to be from a flouting of those existing criteria, which have been accepted as thoroughly practical and are in use as the basis of some of the highest animal welfare schemes in the country. The new proposed regulations have created great concern for all sectors of the livestock industry, but particularly for the sheep sector and remote areas.
	We live in a country of immense climatic and geological variability. We have a livestock industry that depends on transport to ensure the welfare of that livestock, because it requires to be moved from one part of the country to another. I draw noble Lords' attention to a study carried out for one remote area, by the Highlands and Islands Development Board, of the effect of the proposals. It estimates that, for sheep moving within Scotland, the proposals will cost producers an extra 75p per head. For those moving beyond Scotland, they will cost £2 per head. For cattle, they will cost £6.15. That may not seem much but, when calculated over the total animal movements for that area alone, the cost is £1.65 million, in an industry that is severely stretched. Do the Government know any scientific reasons that can be advanced for those EU proposals? What attitude do they expect to take in the negotiations?
	Under our old support systems, farmers liked to feel that they had the ability to cope with all the changes that a commodity trading market could throw at them. The next stage will offer new and greater challenges. Like my noble friend Lord Peel, I ask the Government, if they are making haste, to do so very cautiously.

Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, in the very wide topics that we are debating, I wish to talk about policies on higher education, as other noble Lords have done. Those policies have two overriding priorities. The first is that we do not waste any human capital. Everyone who wishes to go into higher education and is qualified to benefit from it should be able to do so. The second priority is that the universities are sufficiently well funded and free from government interference to provide the right and most suitable kind of higher education for the vastly increased number of students now entering the system.
	Access is fundamental. Any structure that higher education adopts must be sufficient to ensure that the access is to the right kinds of courses, fitted both to the needs and abilities of students and to the needs of the economy and employers outside. Incidentally, I have no problem with the Government's target of 50 per cent. That came not from the Government in the first case, but from the CBI after some very careful study of what the overall demands of the economy would be.
	However, we should remind ourselves that that economy is very diverse. The idea of graduate employment being restricted to a fairly small number of elite jobs is no longer at all credible in a knowledge economy. As other noble Lords have said, there is a wide range of needs in the economy now for highly educated people, which includes everything from the most esoteric of physicists or engineers to the well educated retail manager, hotel manager or surveyor, and nurses and teachers of course in the professions.
	If we are to meet the needs of both the students and the economy, it is important that our system is diverse. I am concerned that the Government's proposals for the £3,000 maximum fee do not encourage diversity. As the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, said, all the signs are that the universities are already saying that they will all charge a flat £3,000 fee for every course and in every kind of institution. That sum simply does not give enough headroom to get the kind of variation that the Government rightly seem to want. It will force the system into uniformity instead of the diversity that we are rightly seeking.
	Let us look at the possibility of adequate financing for the universities. The sum of £3,000 per student is simply not enough. As many noble Lords have said, UUK's estimates are of a £3 billion shortfall, and the £3,000 fee will deliver only half that. Of the £1.5 billion that on the Government's best estimates it will deliver, one third is quite properly set aside for bursaries. Assuming that the Treasury coughs that up in the years before the loans start being repaid, only £1 billion at best will go into universities, which is only a third of what they really need.
	That is an overall figure for all universities. I cannot but declare my interest in my university of Cambridge. Like many of the other top research institutions, it must be able to continue to compete in the international market with universities in the United States and elsewhere where the funding is much better. Having chaired for five or more years 11 of Cambridge University's appointment boards in the sciences, engineering and medicine, I know at first hand how desperately difficult it is to recruit the really top researchers that our country needs in our best universities, when they are being offered not only twice as much, but sometimes five times as much as we can afford to pay them here, by universities in the United States.
	After many years of working and being involved in higher education, my conclusion is that the most important thing that we can do for universities is to set them absolutely free to raise appropriate fees for those students who are well able to pay. Almost half the students at our top universities come from schools where their parents have been paying anything from £12,000 to £20,000 a year for their education. Why should they pass from the sixth form of such a school to a university that they get for £2,000, £3,000 or £4,000 a year? That seems wrong.
	It also seems wrong that the Government are attempting to interfere with the academic freedom of the universities in the nature of the students whom they recruit and accept. In every democracy, the government have traditionally stepped back at arm's length in any question of admission to universities, even though funding is given. The access regulator seems an affront to all who believe in the freedom of the university system.
	It is because of that that I very much welcome the letter that the very respected Council for Industry and Higher Education has written to the Secretary of State. It states:
	"We also want our higher education to be innovative and responsive to an expanding range of needs. This is more likely to be achieved with less central intervention. Each institution, like any other business, should tell people what they will get for their money, price accordingly and let the customer choose".
	I agree entirely.
	A priority in higher education policy is that no student who is capable of benefiting from higher education and wishes to go into it should be denied the opportunity because they or their parents are unable to pay. It is for that reason that I beg the Government to consider the importance of a proper bursary scheme, well publicised, funded and founded, to allay the fears of students from less well-off families that they will acquire debts that they will be unable to pay. Those frighten them in perception more than reality, as the Government will argue, but that may be enough to put them off, which saddens me greatly.
	So I very much welcome the announcement made last week by Cambridge University that, despite its financial difficulties, it intends to provide the one-third of its students, who in the Government's proposed maintenance grant for poorer students will qualify, with bursaries of up to £4,000 a year. It is not intending to do that entirely from its fees but from fundraising. I ask myself how many universities have the range of alumni among whom fundraising can successfully be done, as it can, it is to be hoped, at Cambridge. Very few will be able to match that conclusion.
	I therefore beg the Government to consider setting the universities free to charge reasonable fees. I am sure that Cambridge, if it were left free to set its own market fee, would be able to charge its wealthy students much more and therefore be enabled to give much more to its poorer students. I do not accept the Government's proposals as they stand. I believe that they will discourage the less well-off students; they will not provide sufficient money to bridge the gap in university funding; and they will not encourage the necessary diversity.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: My Lords, I, too, shall speak on higher education in which I declare an interest as chief executive of Universities UK.
	I warmly welcome Her Majesty's announcement of the Government's intention to introduce a higher education Bill in this Session. There are several excellent and welcome elements to this Bill, but I want to concentrate on that which is most controversial; that is, tuition fee increases. I commend the Government for taking the tough decision to include this controversial Bill in the legislative programme and I urge noble Lords to support its passage through this House.
	Her Majesty's Government have a grave responsibility to do what is right and necessary and not just what is easy and popular. In standing by their conviction that urgent action must be taken to safeguard the future of higher education, Ministers have chosen the difficult path. But, in my view, it is the right one.
	The Government are often accused of not listening—but in this case they have listened to what the universities have been saying. They have also listened to what this House has been saying about the urgent need to find a solution to the university funding crisis. They now offer this House and another place an opportunity to act. I think it is now almost universally accepted that universities need more resources. The real debate is about who should pay, how much and when.
	At this point, I want to commend to the House the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. Like the noble Lord, in his seminal report, I believe that all those who benefit from higher education should contribute to its costs when they see that benefit. And I can say that Universities UK believes that it is fair to ask graduates, who gain most from higher education, to pay something towards the costs of their tuition.
	But we now find ourselves at a crossroads. The Government want to give universities the freedom to raise their fees for full-time undergraduate students up to £3,000. They want to give institutions the freedom to chose whether they charge the maximum amount or something lower. They want to give institutions the same freedom and flexibility to set full-time undergraduate fees that they already have—and have managed responsibly—for part-time, international and postgraduate students and, as my noble friend the Minister said this morning, which the Open University has had since its inception. It is worth recalling that at least 50 per cent of all students already pay variable fees.
	A number of alternatives have been discussed. I believe that the idea of a flat-rate increase of £2,500 is being circulated in another place. As others have said, even the Government's proposal will go only some way towards redressing the funding crisis. Of course, any increase in the current fee would help, as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, pointed out, but, in my view, the Government's option offers the best chance of beginning to bridge the funding gap. I am convinced that the way forward lies with a flexible fee structure. I believe that all universities will benefit from the new degree of freedom offered by variable fees.
	Much of the unease about the Government's proposals for variable fees has centred on the idea that it will somehow create poor universities for poor students. I am convinced that will not happen. First, all universities will be better off under the Government's proposals, and so all students will see the benefit of that. Secondly, it is by no means clear that some universities will charge £3,000 for all their courses while others will charge much less for theirs. It is much more likely that course fees will vary within institutions, with most charging more for some courses and less for others. The variable system proposed by the Government will give vice-chancellors the freedom and flexibility to respond to local conditions and to stimulate demand for courses where demand has been weak in the past, such as some languages and science courses. Do we really want to tell universities that they should be prohibited from cutting course fees? Universities need the same flexibility in relation to full-time undergraduates as they have for other students.
	Thirdly, the Government propose to increase the level of financial support for the poorest students. Currently, around 42 per cent of students do not pay fees. Universities have been discussing with the Government the best ways to ensure that these most disadvantaged students are in no way worse off as a result of the proposed changes. And with their increased income from fees, the universities will be in a better position than ever to offer additional assistance to the students who are in most need.
	Combined, these factors mean that the students from the poorest backgrounds, who may well be those most likely to be put off by the prospect of debt, are likely to be no worse off under the proposed system than under the current one. That means that no poor student should be put off attending even the most expensive course. And other students will also benefit because none of them will pay any fee at all until graduation.
	What the Government propose is that we ask potential students to make a considered investment in their future—an investment which, as my noble friend Lord Mitchell so lucidly demonstrated, is clearly worth it. There is plenty of evidence from the benefits graduates enjoy in terms of higher earnings, more choice and opportunity, social mobility and even health.
	What is more, despite the increase in the number of graduates in the UK, emerging evidence shows that the earnings premium is increasing. There is plenty of help for those most likely to be cautious. The repayment threshold and zero real rate of interest protects those who take a long time to repay their loans because their income is low, or because they take career breaks.
	In my lifetime, I have seen higher education transformed from the preserve of a fortunate elite to something to which everyone can aspire. I passionately believe that this is right and necessary for social justice and economic success.
	This Government are not afraid to make tough choices. They could have settled for a quiet life and ignored the implications of continued neglect of higher education. They have instead demonstrated their commitment to higher education through the introduction of this Bill. Noble Lords will know that Universities UK will be taking an enormous interest in the details of the Bill once it is published, but I have no hesitation whatever in welcoming its inclusion in the Address.

Lord Sewel: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, does she accept that the contribution made ought to be proportionate to the benefit received?

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend will agree that all graduates obtain a benefit from higher education and that in the case of those making a contribution on a variable basis, they will be making a proportional contribution.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, will she not accept that a sizeable number of graduates are doing menial jobs? Not long ago, I was in the north east and saw three graduates on the assembly line at the Samsung factory. My son is an academic in science research at Cambridge University and at the age of 36 he is earning £26,000 a year. The notion that graduates automatically coin in the money simply is not true.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: My Lords, for many of us who went to university, the first jobs we undertook could by no means be called undergraduate jobs. I am pleased to say that most of us have been able subsequently to benefit from our higher education. But I do not believe that there is a difference between us because those on low incomes will make no repayment of their fees. Under the Government's proposals, they will not begin to make contributions until they are earning, currently, £15,000 a year.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, perhaps, as a point of fact, I may ask the noble Baroness whether, on that basis, she agrees that those who do not earn more than £31,000 per annum during their lifetime on current rates would never pay back their debt? Does she agree that the effective rate of income tax on the loan amounts to 41 per cent, which is more than the rate of income tax that we charge millionaires? They would continue to pay that throughout their working lives if they never earned more than £31,000.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: My Lords, perhaps I may briefly comment on that. It seems to me that the proportion of income that they will pay on that basis will remain small as well.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I rise with some diffidence in an attempt to be a filling in a higher education sandwich. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Desai will continue the debate. However, I want to talk about something completely different—the environment, transport and safety. It has been an interesting debate, but transport is part of the environment. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, although I shall not talk too much about rail freight now.
	In the gracious Speech is the prospect of legislation on school transport and roadworks but sadly, I believe, nothing on road safety. However, I believe that it is still the Government's policy to encourage more people and freight to move to less environmentally bad means of transport. That is part of their policy, as is their intention to reduce injury and deaths on the roads and on other means of transport.
	Therefore, I want to consider the issue of transport safety in the round. Yesterday, the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, asked an interesting Starred Question. We all want safety in our lives but, as my noble friend Lord Peston said, life is dangerous, even at home. However, I believe that we then need to ask ourselves whether the rules, standards and laws, and so on, help to achieve safety or whether there are perversities, such as when the application of rules in one sector causes more accidents by transferring an activity to a less safe and less regulated mode.
	Every year, nearly 4,000 people are killed on the roads and very many more are seriously injured, compared with just a handful on the railways. That excludes accidents at level crossings and as a result of suicide or trespass, which are not really caused by the railways. Some may argue that rail travel should be safer because one expects a higher standard when in the care of others. But the same comment applies to most road accidents. Few are self-inflicted and certainly not those in which thousands of pedestrians and cyclists are killed and seriously injured by motor vehicles each year. Many of those victims and drivers were "at work".
	It is the role of the Health and Safety Executive and Health and Safety Commission to minimise the risk of death or injury in the workplace. But, interestingly, I received a Written Answer on 18th November which stated:
	"It has been the policy of successive governments that the HSE should not generally seek to enforce health and safety at work legislation where public and worker safety can adequately be protected by more specific and detailed law enforced by another authority".—[Official Report, 18/11/03; col. WA 282.]
	Therefore, the HSE spends about £262 million every year chasing just a few deaths on the railways and forcing up costs many times while, perhaps at the request of government, it ignores nearly 4,000 deaths a year on the roads. Surely it should also be working towards reducing the number of deaths and injuries which occur on transport, regardless of mode. The problem is that the HSE's action on the railways, and inaction on the roads, is having completely the opposite effect.
	There is a government policy to encourage more public transport, but the problem is that the costs on the railway are shooting up and out of control. I want to quote from a report produced about a month ago by Transport 2000. It stated that analyses suggest that,
	"unit costs [of railway] have increased by a factor of three or more since privatisation. In some cases the multiple can be as much as five times".
	No single factor is responsible for cost inflation; rather, it is a combination of internal effects—for example, the sub-contracting of responsibility for maintenance and so on—and external forces, such as safety legislation. Costs have risen by a factor of three, four or five since privatisation.
	As noble Lords may know, Network Rail has taken maintenance back in-house and is restructuring to reduce costs. One wishes it well. But passenger train services are costing more and more. Therefore, I want to consider the causes of the costs. The Government rightly tell industry that it must reduce its costs but, when it comes to the causes of costs, that is an issue which the Government can change for the better as it is something that the Government have created themselves.
	I shall give a few examples. I read about the best one, which came from the Health and Safety Executive, only last week. New trains on the Connex South Central service south of London are longer than the platforms at which they will stop. The Health and Safety Executive said that the platforms must be extended, but that would cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Eventually, the train operator obtained permission to extend only a small proportion of the platforms and install something called "selective door opening". That means that the driver can press a certain button and only the doors opposite the platform will open. "Ah", said the HSE, "but how does the driver know that he is at a short platform?" The answer was that GPS would have to be fitted to the cabs of every train so that drivers would know where they were. Surely, if a driver is responsible, he will know where he is. What is the cost of the GPS and of the platforms? The worst thing is that the HSE will deny all that and say that the operator offered to carry out the work. However, the operator offered to do so only because there was no other way to get the trains to run. They would continue to sit in the sidings, as they have done for the past few years.
	I could give many, many such examples, but I believe that the real problem is that a bureaucracy has entered this issue, coupled with a fear of prosecution. The HSE will say that that is a good thing and that, in any event, it never requires things to be done. It covers its tracks well, but the climate of fear is there. Is it really right for the railways to be subject to the same enforcement policy as oil rigs and gas plants and so on? Are the railways really so dangerous when roads, according to the HSE, are not dangerous? Noble Lords may have read in the Economist last week about the recent resignation of the Director of Rail Safety, Alan Osborne. He was quoted as saying that the HSE had become "dysfunctional".
	It is funny that the HSE set up a complete department to implement the Cullen recommendations following the accidents on the Great Western line. There are 194 recommendations. However, the only one that the HSE has not implemented is the one that would allow a new independent chief inspector of railways from outside the industry to run the Railway Inspectorate. That is a classic case of good old Whitehall protecting itself and never mind the rest of us.
	I agree with Mr Osborne: the real problem is that the HSE has become totally dysfunctional. I believe that we must consider carefully the possible solutions. The HSE must implement the common value for preventable fatality between road and rail. Billions of pounds are being wasted. With the creation of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch and the RSSB, which we all discussed when debating the Railways and Transport Safety Bill last summer, do we really need the HSE and the HMRI dipping their fingers into everything, hyping up the media and then, having done so, saying that there is public concern? We do need an independent safety regulator under the forthcoming European regulations, but it does not have to be this way.
	My suggestion, for what it is worth, is that the overall regulation should be moved to a joint safety and economic rail regulator. That would have many advantages. It would save a great deal of money; it would keep the regulator at arm's length from central government; and it would ensure that the economic and safety aspects of the railways were considered in the round.
	I believe that the Government would then achieve their twin goals of reducing railway costs, getting more passengers and freight on to the railways, and reducing transport accidents overall by moving towards a CAA approach to the railways. At the same time the HSE might spend some of its £256 million on turning its attention to road fatalities. If that is not a good idea, it could give some of that money to the police and to the other law enforcement agencies to get a reduction in some of the 4,000 deaths. The Government could be in a win/win situation. I conclude by asking my noble friend whether we can expect a short Bill next summer to put right some of those gross anomalies.

Lord Desai: My Lords, I have taught in higher education in this country for 38 years. As I have just retired I do not have to declare an interest in relation to these proposals. If these proposals, whatever they may be—even the most generous version in terms of resources—are implemented, people who follow me will not be as well off as I was when I arrived in 1965.
	In my teaching career I have witnessed—at least in the past 20 years—nothing but massive deterioration in the working conditions of academics, especially young academics who struggle to find a full-time job almost six or seven years after completing their PhD, after writing articles and after having published books.
	A strange anomaly is that when we talk about hospitals and mental health services everyone in the political world enthuses about nurses and doctors; everyone loves secondary school teachers and cannot do better for them or for primary school teachers; and everyone loves the producers in manufacturing industry and in public services, but everyone hates the academics. No one has a single word of sympathy for the plight of academics. That is so because when one thinks of higher education or when higher education is shown on television one thinks of or sees the lovely lawns of an Oxbridge college with people swanning about in gowns. The world believes that all academics teach and live in Oxbridge colleges; the world believes that academics do not really have to do any hard work; they give the same lectures every year, have long vacations and somehow they are lotus eaters.
	I would echo one part of what my noble friend Lord Puttnam said in an imaginative speech. If this matter is not put right at this juncture, 20 years from now we shall not have a higher education system; we shall have what Germany or Italy has, which is an education system that is so awful that, ever since it became possible for students in the European Union to undertake courses in British universities, at the same level of fees as British students, we have had a huge influx of European students. The reason is that our system, even now, is better.
	What is to be done? We all agree that resources are needed. I have been a supporter of loan-financed higher education with contingent income loans since 1987 when my young colleague, Dr Nicholas Barr, first sent me a paper on loan-financed higher education. I want to put that paradox to people. It is not equitable in an unequal society to have uniform pricing. It is actually very inequitable. Over the past 30 years we have subsidised the richer, middle-class children due to the fear that the minority working-class children, who would not be able to go to university if higher fees were charged, would suffer. Therefore, until December 1997, the 10 per cent tail has wagged the 90 per cent dog—middle-class people. They received a huge subsidy and that has been inequitable.
	That is regressive distribution of income, giving people free higher education because of a desire that more working-class people should go to university. The reason that such people have not gone to universities in the past has had little to do with the level of fees. When I first arrived here to teach there were no working-class students, there were no fees and there were full maintenance grants. There were no working-class students because the quality of our secondary schools was such that they did not stay on after the age of 16. If one wants more working-class children to go to university one should not look at universities, but at schools. One must also make many opportunities available for people who do not want to go to university immediately at age 18. There are many more routes to choose.
	That is exactly what happens in the United States. The reason why the United States has the largest degree of access to higher education compared with any European country is not that it is socialist, but that it is not. It has always had a diversity of fee charging and a diversity of standards in different universities. No one lays down uniformity or that every university has to do the same thing. They allow universities to choose how to structure themselves. If universities choose to be good the students will recognise that, and if they choose to be bad the students will know that they are bad. After all, those going to universities are literate 18 or 20 year-olds and they can find out for themselves whether a university is good or bad. One does not have to tell them. If they had to be told it would not be worth going to university.
	My first solution, which will never happen, would be that universities would charge whatever they want for whichever course and that the current level of support that the Government provide will be leveraged into bursaries, so that everyone would pay, and those who qualify for bursaries and win them would receive full bursaries. Rather than waste your subsidy on middle-class children, as we do now, we would conserve the new resources in order to give bursaries. That bursary fund would not be specific to universities but would be national.
	Like American universities, there would be income-blind admissions. Universities could then admit people and those with an admission could go to the National Bursary Fund saying, "I have been admitted to Oxford, Warwick, Sunderland, or wherever; I want this much money; these are my qualifications; give me the money". That would allow for much greater leverage.
	My time is running out, but I have one more point to make. I believe that we have muddled the maintenance grant problem. Everyone talks about the debt horror, but it is strange that people talk about debt horror only in relation to higher education. Have noble Lords read any tabloids lately? The last half of every tabloid is about borrowing. We borrow for everything else but not for higher education. That is nice, is it not?
	We have muddled the maintenance grant. This probably would not happen because it is a rather idealistic proposal, but I would put all full-time higher education students on income support. Why give them that money? We would do so because they are doing something in which society wants to invest. We want them to have that time at university and it is worth giving students the minimum that we believe anyone deserves for survival.
	Of course, that will cost money, but that money will be repaid from their future income tax. In a sense it is an investment and it will remove the fear. If I had more time I would comment on the proposal made by my noble friend Lord Puttnam. My proposal is that any fee that is charged by any university would generate the resources, but if one is not allowed to do that I would prefer the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk. He said that as regards the £3,000, there will be variations within that for each university. Therefore, I say to my noble friend, "Let us not have £20 billion, but can we have £40 billion please?"

The Lord Bishop of Southwark: My Lords, I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Desai, does not have more time because the debate between him and the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, would be worth listening to.
	I regret also that your Lordships can make only one speech in this debate, as I would have been tempted to put down my name to speak on rural affairs, the environment, and education. If all noble Lords had done that, an already lengthy debate would have gone on long into the night. So, because of the Church's close involvement with education, the choice today must be education. I speak on my own behalf and that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, who chairs the Church of England's Board of Education but who cannot be in his place.
	We welcome the high priority given to education in the gracious Speech. It was particularly interesting to hear a link between,
	"individuals achieving their full potential",
	and "Britain's future success". I should like to put that another way: the aim of education surely must be to equip students to make their own way in the world and to help them to make that world a better place for others.
	There is more to an individual than economic production and so more to an individual achieving his or her full potential than becoming an effective unit of resource. Real success for Britain will be the rebuilding of a humane and civilised, diverse but cohesive society. Many teachers today are strongly committed to students achieving their full potential in that way. They have felt as though they were swimming against a strong tide in recent years.
	The Government, we are told, are committed to raising educational standards. That can and should be interpreted to mean much more than literacy and numeracy, important though they are. Such standards have been raised in primary schools but at a great cost. The Government, to their credit, have recognised that cost and now promote excellence and enjoyment as the main drivers for the primary school curriculum.
	The school league tables published today for the first time rightly include a value added factor. They therefore become more useful as a guide to how well a school is doing, although I remain cautious about the whole concept of league tables. As it happens, seven out of the 10 best performing schools in these tables are faith schools—Jewish, Roman Catholic and Church of England. We have more than 100 church schools in my own diocese, many of which are in the urban areas of south London. I know just what a springboard of opportunity these schools are, in particular for minority ethnic children.
	The Minister in introducing the debate referred to the consultation paper Every Child Matters. Every child does matter. School standards matter, but in a frantic and fractured society where school is sometimes the only centre of stability for some children, the ordered, happy climate of a primary school can itself be a great blessing to its pupils, whatever the other standards might be.
	Of course standards need to be raised in secondary schools. That is a demanding task, particularly in south London where house prices make it difficult for urban schools to maintain a stable teaching body and where sometimes the majority of students receive free school meals. Standards matter, especially for the non-academic, many of whom are still failed by the system, but again that must not be at the expense of breadth in the curriculum.
	We on these Benches are conscious that reforms being planned to the school curriculum post-14 might jeopardise some of that breadth. For example, the Secretary of State, recently said that,
	"the call of the times is for a higher profile for Religious Education",
	in schools. We agree. Yet, post-14 reforms might put that at risk.
	The Church of England is happy to play its part in promoting a more diverse secondary system. I am particularly pleased to have visited the St Cecilia's Church of England High School, which recently opened in Wandsworth in my diocese. This school, which specialises in music, is one of many brand new state-of-the-art Church of England secondary schools being opened through an effective partnership between the Church and local government with the encouragement of national governments. Thankfully, the days are long gone when some local authorities regard church schools with suspicion.
	The Church of England has welcomed much in the proposals on higher education set out by the Government. It has a very long history of commitment to this sector. The 11 Church of England colleges and universities serve a diverse student body. Our chaplains serve the needs of students and staff in the majority of higher education institutions in the land. We want to see our universities flourish, not just for the good of those who study and work in them, but for us all. Here I must declare an interest. I am a member of the council of King's College, London, and, indeed, I chair its staffing policy committee. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that I for one have a high opinion of academics.
	I know from this first-hand experience how much universities and colleges have striven to maintain quality despite financial pressures in recent years. They urgently need better resourcing. But how to do so is a matter of great debate. We welcome some aspects of the proposed new funding arrangements: the reintroduction of the grant and deferring payment of fees and loans until graduates earn enough to afford to repay them. But there is a perception that what is being demanded of students is a widespread acceptance of greater levels of debt.
	The Church is rightly proud of the record of its colleges in widening participation. It would be most concerned if a perception that higher education is only for those who can afford it puts wider access in peril. Universities are precious institutions. There is a long tradition of Christian reflection in this area. John Henry Newman in 1854 wrote:
	"The general principles of any study you may learn by books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all those from those in whom it lives already".
	That is what universities are truly about. Universities do not just bestow individual financial benefits. Such benefits may come, but graduates frequently choose a profession despite it not being well paid.
	The ideal of service in the common interest is central to the Christian tradition. We should beware that self-interest does not become a prime motivation in government policy.
	Whatever measures are put in place must be for the common good. we look forward to playing a part in the forthcoming debates. Whatever other weighty matters may be before your Lordships' House in the coming months, I believe that nothing will have more significance than this matter.

Lord Rix: My Lords, first I must apologise for not being in my place this morning. I have explained my absence to both Front Benches and I am grateful to them for being so understanding and agreeing to my speaking in the gap.
	I should like to refer to the part of the gracious Speech which touched on higher education. In so doing, I must declare an interest, although not a financial one. Six years ago I was privileged to become the first Chancellor of the University of East London. For the past month I have been performing at the Barbican. Some old thespians have a pantomime season; in my new role I have a graduation season. This year I have shaken the hands and congratulated more than 1,500 of our students whose hard work—often in the most straitened circumstances—has won them success.
	The gracious Speech referred to a new office of fair access. I must say that my university does not need such an office. While Oxford and Cambridge colleges were still debating whether or not to admit the fairer sex, our foundation institution was training women for careers in teaching, nursing and industrial chemistry. Now the quality of our arts is rated the same as Oxford, our sociology the same as Durham and our cultural and media studies is one of the handful of international class departments in Great Britain.
	Even before we had the opportunity to read the Lambert report this morning, we had responded to the call from the Chancellor to forge stronger links between universities and industry. Our business incubator units are full. We have a centre of manufacturing excellence with Ford and other universities at Dagenham. Working with such companies as Cisco and Logica, we provide the network hub for another new technology institute. We have established our inventors' club and a number of our products have already reached the marketplace. The list goes on. Yet we are a university likely to be adversely affected by the Government's proposals, as are other universities that serve the poorer areas of our country. Have not the recent ludicrous proposals from the HEFCE, which will leave four out of five universities with the most black students worse off, created enough turmoil already?
	I begin with fees. It seems that the Government desire variable fees—fees that vary not just from subject to subject, as they do in Australia, but from university to university. If the Ivy League universities are to add to their substantial endowments by charging more than relative newcomers, it will not be long before a whole class of higher education institutions are dismissed by some Government spokesperson as "bog-standard universities".
	We are also told that one third of any top-up that we charge should go to bursaries. Regrettably, it is the universities that serve the poorest areas that will be least able to support extensive bursary schemes. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, a fairer way would be for those "thirds" to be paid into a national bursary fund, not the lottery of individual bursary schemes.
	I am sure that there is much in the Government's proposals for higher education that deserves our approbation—for example, the belated adoption of the ideas contained in the report of my noble friend Lord Dearing, who is not in his place, of payment after graduation and the restoration of the student maintenance grant for those who need it most. However, I must ask three questions that require an answer. Is the system of bursaries the best that we can devise? Is the system of differential fees truly world-class? Do the Government's proposals safeguard those universities whose mission is to serve the poorer parts of our country?
	If the answer to any of those questions is "No", I can only fall back on a phrase that was commonplace among educators in my youth, but, alas, has fallen out of favour in these politically correct times: the Government must try harder.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, today's debate on the gracious Speech has addressed the issues of education, the environment and rural affairs. In consequence, we have had a wide-ranging debate, which has touched on issues as diverse as European regulations for yoghurt, Scottish railways, wind farms, farm management, animal health regulations and traffic safety, as well as the issue of top-up fees, which has perhaps come to dominate our discussions, especially just recently.
	Inevitably, given the wide range of topics that has been discussed, someone in my place—asked to wind-up the debate—wonders where to begin and end. If I may, I shall concentrate mainly on issues in education, which is my field, but touch on one or two others, because it is appropriate to do so when speaking from the Front Bench.
	One thing that has struck me is that although no legislation is proposed for agriculture this year, nevertheless, from the speeches that we have heard, it is clear that many and wide-ranging changes are afoot in that sector that will result in considerable changes in organisation and management, and that, on the whole, at present the Government are a follower rather than a leader of those changes.
	As a follower and a leader, the Government are also in danger of doing too little in the field of the environment—where, again, there is surprisingly little legislation. Despite the frequent obeisance to notions of sustainability and the sustainable community, what is actually proposed will do little to channel the activities and energies of this country into more sustainable routes.
	I very much agree with some of the ideas advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, who is not in his place. For example, it is vital that we begin to face up to the environmental pollution created by the aviation industry. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, mentioned wind farms and said that, in a sense, they are the only game in town at present in sustainable energy, but there is the real problem of what we do when the wind does not blow. We must provide back-up facilities by ordinary methods of energy creation.
	As I said, I shall concentrate mainly on education issues. I touch on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about school finance. That does not fall within the ambit of the gracious Speech but, nevertheless, it may well dominate some of our discussions during the next year. It is vital that we get it correct. The whole issue of local governance was raised by both the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lady Maddock.
	Today's Audit Commission report makes it clear that at present, in many senses, local government receives too much from central Government: it is too beholden to central Government. We need a reordering within the framework of local government finance between locally derived and centrally provided resources. The main reason why there have been such huge increases in council tax is the reordering of the grants already given by the Government. We need real consideration of the local government finance settlement and new developments in it.
	I also briefly mention the question of school transport, on which there will be a Bill. The issue bridges the educational and environmental agendas. The Bill's aim will be to lessen the congestion caused by the school run. I hope that, at a time when we are worried by growing obesity in children, just as much attention will be given to encouraging children to walk or cycle to school as to forcing their parents to reconfigure their lives by staggering school hours, and so forth.
	I am myself staggered by the suggestion that school children should be means tested for school bus fares. I recognise that the current proposals are merely for trials, but it defies the laws of supply and demand that we should think that one way to avoid congestion on the roads is to charge children on school buses more. I hope that that experiment will not be carried out in rural areas, where children are dependent on school buses for travelling to school, and that it will prove to be an experiment that gets lost.
	Before I turn to top-up fees, I should discuss the child protection Bill. The Bill follows two Green Papers: No Child Left Behind and Children at Risk. Along with other noble Lords who have spoken on the subject in this and other parts of the debate, broadly speaking, we welcome the Bill's proposals. In particular, we are delighted to read of a children's commissioner for England alongside the children's commissioners that already exist for Wales and Scotland.
	Last year, I had cause to entertain in your Lordships' House the children's commissioner for Denmark. I was intrigued and delighted to discover from him that he made himself such a champion for children that, in effect, he had his own Childline—children spoke directly to him about their problems and he championed their issues. He was not just a voice for the lobby groups for children. I hope that our children's commissioner will be the same.
	I also welcome moves to bring together all the services dealing with children. It is important that we have a director of children's services in local authorities. I look forward to discovering how the new children's trusts will work. I hope that in both cases there is meaningful accountability and it is not just another exercise in renaming and buck-passing. There must be real accountability, which means that there must be real authority over issues that impinge on children beyond education and social services; for example, housing, policing and psychiatric and counselling services. I echo the hope expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that school counsellors will be reinstated. They can do enormous good and prevent problems being pushed down the road and getting bigger.
	I echo the thoughts of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on the importance of parenting education and its role on the citizenship agenda. It is important that we educate young people before they become parents. I have always maintained that the most important time to provide parenting education is during ante-natal classes. I hope that parenting will become part of ante-natal preparation.
	We have heard many contributions from around the Chamber on top-up fees. It is no secret that we oppose top-up fees, but it is not correct to suggest, as Ministers and the media have sometimes done, that our position is sheer opportunism. We have a fully fledged, coherent policy on higher education, which, if truth be known, we believe to be more comprehensive than that proposed by the Government in their White Paper. We are looking not just at the higher education sector but also at further education, as the boundaries between the two have become blurred. We agree entirely with the observation by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, that higher and further education are the best routes towards social mobility.
	In our paper we also embrace the concept of e-learning, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Parry. The Government's paper does not embrace such concepts or present a 21st-century vision for higher education. Too often, it looks backwards to the academic vision of higher education—that is our main criticism of the paper. We have developed coherent proposals on that front. I wish to make an important point on the structure of higher education. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, said that we were in danger of muddling the maintenance and tuition aspects of universities. In my opinion, we are in danger of muddling the research and teaching aspects.
	Much of the concern expressed about universities relates to this country's ability to maintain the competitive leading edge in research. That is very true. It is now widely accepted that research and development help to create innovation, which is at the core of the country's competitiveness. The United Kingdom's difficulty is that, traditionally, since 1980, we have spent less as a proportion of GDP on research and development than most of our advanced industrial competitors. That applies to the government sector, whose share of the proportion of R&D has fallen dramatically over the past 25 years, and the industrial sector, whose share is abysmal, with the exception of the pharmaceutical and aeronautical industries.
	Unless the Government and industry both pull their socks up and ramp up investment in research and development, our research sector cannot survive, as Michael Porter said in his very interesting study, Report on the Competitiveness of the UK Economy. The Government have done their bit. University research budgets have received money—in 1999, under the joint infrastructure project, and under all the CSRs. In the latest Comprehensive Spending Review, the increase in the research budget in real terms is 10 per cent per annum. I accept that there is a huge backlog to be made good, but we recognise that the Government are doing something about research.
	University teaching budgets have been starved by this and previous governments. Nobody cares much about university teachers and their conditions. I was surprised that it was the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who raised a debate in this House about salaries of academic staff, which was interesting. Top-up fees are not the answer to research funding problems in universities and cannot be expected to be. The money to be raised from top-up fees is intended to help university teaching. Student numbers have doubled without a proportionate increase in resources, so the unit of resource has halved precisely over the past 20 years. In the end, chickens come home to roost. Buildings are crumbling due to lack of maintenance; there are not rooms big enough to accommodate classes of 20; and there are not lecture halls big enough to take the size of lectures that must now be given. Pupil/teacher ratios are higher than in secondary schools. Everybody now accepts that universities need more money; the question is where it will come from. That is the issue of top-up fees.
	The Government have muddied the field by setting themselves twin objectives that in some senses are diametrically opposite. There is the objective of increasing the resources available to universities, but alongside that is the objective of expanding numbers under the inclusion agenda. It is almost impossible to meet both objectives simultaneously. If you wish to include more people from low-income families, you do not increase the price, which is what the Government are doing through top-up fees. I accept that by increasing the price we are using the market. However, those who argue for the use of the market then say that they do not want to use it because universities already have a market based on ability, and that students should be selected by ability. Supporters of top-up fees say that they do not want those of high ability to be unable to go to university because they cannot afford it; therefore, they are disposing of the market. If you want to use top-up fees to ration places at universities, you cannot accept simultaneously that the market should be ignored and another scheme introduced to admit able students. That is a form of selection by ability.
	The Government propose to raise the money by putting up fees. It will be "study now, pay later". The Government say, "We are not going to charge upfront fees. Instead, we will switch to loans". We should not forget that those loans will be a bigger subsidy to the middle classes than they had before. We have already seen that with the maintenance loans. Essentially, we will offer the middle classes free money to put into the building society and earn interest on while they are at college.
	As well as the "pay later" loans, there is the means-tested grant. In the White Paper, the means-tested grant was for maintenance; now it is to defray fees. Which is it intended to be? On top of that, the Government are saying that the important thing is the differential fee. We will have "Oftoff" or "Offa"—or whatever it will be called. There will be a director of access. Originally, we thought that the director of access would look to see which universities offered decent access to those from low-income families and then allow them to put up fees, so that it would be universities such as the University of East London that would put up fees. We now understand that the Russell group will be able to put up fees, but only to £3,000 and that one third of the revenue from fees is to be allocated to bursaries. Again, there is that administrative cap—only up to £3,000. That hardly provides anything.
	What have we got with all the complicated procedures that have been put in place to try to marry the two objectives? We have a mess of pottage. We have a system that is unfair because of debt aversion. Whether we like it or no, those who come from low-income families are worried by huge debts and are put off applying to places where they might incur them. Secondly, those debts bear down disproportionately on young graduates who do not earn much and on those who, during their career, will not earn much. People will not pay off the debt, if they earn less than £31,000. With earnings up to something like £22,000, they will not even pay the interest, even with inflation, on the debt that they are likely to have. That is an important issue.
	The system will be inefficient. How much will the fees raise? At most, they will raise £1 billion for the universities. How much do the universities need? They need at least £2 billion a year. The proposals are ineffective, and the fees will not raise what we require for the universities. So much of the money will be diverted into bursaries. Basically, they will raise £1 billion a year.
	It will be costly. How much will it cost us to raise £1 billion a year? Loans do not come for free. The Treasury has to borrow the money. It borrows at 4.5 per cent, but students pay only 2.5 per cent. There is also the risk of default. The study done by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that 40 per cent of the cost of fees must be regarded as a resource cost. I underline that. It will cost £400 million a year for a £1 billion benefit. That is a costly way of raising money.
	Our way of raising the £2 billion would be to look to income tax, an income tax on those earning over £100,000 a year. This generation of students has already borne the cost of the switch from maintenance grants to maintenance loans. Those who earn more money pay more tax, if the income tax system is properly progressive. We do not think that the income tax system is properly progressive, which is why we want to make it more progressive. Some 82 per cent of those who earn over £100,000 are graduates, so we are getting to what the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, spoke about; namely, a dedicated graduate tax on high earners.
	I am of the generation that benefited from a university education for which tuition fees were paid and there were generous maintenance grants. That was funded by earlier generations. Why should the current generation, which has benefited disproportionately from the rise in income for those in the professional classes, jerk away from being equally generous to future generations?

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I have always thought it a privilege to open or wind up in a debate on the gracious Speech. However, today is even more special, as it is the first time that I have had the opportunity to wind up for the Opposition on the final day.
	There have been many excellent speeches in the past five sitting days, covering all areas of interest that will be the subject of our work in the rest of the Session. The House has been privileged to hear three excellent maiden speeches during our debates—those made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, from whom we heard today. I am not sure that what we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, was, in fact, a maiden speech. The noble Lord has enjoyed what can only be described as a second coming. I congratulate him warmly on his speech today, and I know that Members in all parts of the House look forward to hearing him speak in future debates.
	It is regrettable that the debate should embrace so many subjects and that it should take place on a truncated parliamentary day. Due to time constraints, there is no way that I could do justice to so many speeches that have been made today. Of course, all our debates on the gracious Speech will provide the Government and the House with a valuable insight into the views of Members on all Benches about the Bills that are scheduled to come before us in the next weeks and months. My noble friend Lady Hanham opened the debate with an impressive speech. My noble friend brings a wealth of knowledge and experience of local government to our debates. Certainly, her contribution today was evidence of her fingertip knowledge of some very complex matters.
	I am fortunate to have three Front Bench noble friends helping to cover the many topics contained within the title of today's debate. My noble friend Lady Byford also has enormous experience of rural affairs. She has spoken from these Benches with skill and a deep understanding of issues concerning the countryside and country people. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose also brings considerable expertise to bear on our debates and today was no exception. I am deeply grateful to each of my noble friends for their contributions today.
	The protection of children as a high priority is supported by all political parties and measures to improve the service for vulnerable children often achieve political consensus. The detail of the Bill when it comes before the House will receive very careful attention. It is critical to produce reforms that are practical, manageable and properly funded. People who have responsibility for such sensitive work should be fully accountable and the level of unnecessary bureaucracy should not stifle the work of the professional.
	The tragedy of the Victoria Climbie case, the Lauren Wright case and other cases was that so many professionals knew that there were problems, but they failed to act on them. My honourable friend Tim Loughton said that,
	"the effectiveness of child protection will not be determined by a new Tsar or more levels of bureaucracy but rather by having the right (trained) professionals at grass root level picking up intelligence on child abuse and working with other agencies to intervene".
	My concern is the dangerously high level of vacancies in this specialist work which needs to be addressed with urgency—a point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. What is being done about that problem? I echo what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. If the Government are serious that the child protection Bill should be cost neutral, once again I fear that local authorities will be left unilaterally picking up the bill.
	On reading the Green Paper, a single monolithic system appears to be the Government's answer to child protection. I wonder whether that is right. We will want to look carefully at the arrangements for keeping electronic records of all the 11 million children in this country. We will wish to explore what information will be kept and for what purpose, and who will have access, who will authorise third party access and who will hold and administer the register.
	The Government's record for managing computer systems is so far lamentable. We shall look for guarantees that the keeping and administration of such sensitive information is not farmed out to a third world country, like so much other work. Perhaps the Minister will give answers to those questions when she replies.
	I understand that there is to be a draft Bill relating to the rights and opportunities of disabled people. We look forward to being involved in the scrutiny process. However, I am not absolutely certain at this stage whether that will come under the education portfolio. Perhaps the Minister can tell us.
	The ink is hardly dry on the Anti-social Behaviour Act when we are warned in the gracious Speech that further anti-social behaviour powers will be sought for schools and local authorities. What is so new now that was not foreseen only a matter of months ago? Quite frankly, schools and local authorities must be in despair at the Government's lack of coherence and competence in that area.
	We are warned that there is to be a shake up in the provision of school transport. My noble friend Lady Byford has referred to that matter as it affects the rural communities. I hope that the Government will take note of what my noble friend said. Narrow country lanes without sidewalks and the distances that children have to travel could present insuperable problems for rural families if school transport were to be removed.
	I turn now to the most contentious part of the gracious Speech; that is, the higher education Bill. It proposes the introduction of variable top-up fees of up to £3,000 for access to university. Am I alone in being dismayed at two references in the gracious Speech in relation to this Bill? The first concerns the deceptive language used:
	"A Bill will be introduced to enable more young people to benefit from higher education. Up-front tuition fees will be abolished for all full-time students".—[Official Report, 26/11/03; col. 1.]
	It will not be lost on anyone, least of all our students, that there was no mention at all of an increase of 200 per cent in the top-up fees. Secondly, I was struck by the inelegance of the phrase "up-front tuition fees".
	I have read the higher education White Paper very carefully and many questions remain to be answered. For example, paragraph 7.40 on page 87 states that "after graduation", or indeed following dropping out of university,
	"loans will be repaid through the tax system at the rate of 9 per cent of [the individual's] income above a certain threshold".
	Can the Minister tell the House what is that threshold?
	There is no argument between the political parties that higher education requires increased funding. I agree with my noble friend Lord Wakeham, the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, and others that this is the case and has been so for a long time; indeed, that is why the Dearing report was commissioned, although sadly his recommendations were not accepted by the Government. However, there is concern about the Government's 50 per cent target for access to higher education. Concern is also felt about the high drop-out rates at some of our universities and about the number of students who are accepted into university with inadequate qualifications which inhibit them from benefiting from a higher education degree. It is also the case that there needs to be a substantial increase in the provision of high-quality vocational options to meet more effectively the needs of many post-16 students.
	There are a number of real concerns about the Government's proposals to raise top-up fees. Many concessions have already been made, and from what we learn from the pressure on Mr Blair and on Mr Charles Clarke to woo their own party members, more concessions could be on the way. It is possible that, just as the Bill on foundation hospitals resulted in such a diluted proposition that the original proposals were lost from sight, top-up fees will hardly be worth collecting if the greater proportion of the money going into universities through fees are fed back through complex concessionary arrangements. Apart from the cost of a massive means-testing bureaucracy, the additional grants and further delays in the repayment threshold, the net amount from which the universities will benefit will be seriously eroded. I agree with the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, that it will go absolutely nowhere to resolve the problems in higher education.
	However, the most pernicious proposal of all is the appointment of an access tsar and the funds that will have to be diverted to pay for his department. This is pure social engineering and a direct attack on academic freedom. The Government dishonestly use the language of freedom for the universities and then totally contradict themselves by the appointment of a access tsar. Universities will not be free to make a decision about additional fees on the basis of a fully costed business case, but only on the whim of the access tsar, who will make a judgment about the degree to which each university has socially engineered its intake.
	I have been impressed by many of our universities which go to enormous lengths to find the brightest young people from schools and families in which there is no tradition of attending higher education. Access should be on the basis of merit decided by the institution itself, not according to contrived rules overseen by a government-appointed apparatchik.
	The way to increase the opportunities for young people from poorer backgrounds is, as has been said, to improve school-based education and to raise the aspirations of young people, along with those of their families and teachers. However, this is a Government who removed the life chances for many children by abolishing the assisted places scheme which was specifically designed to help bright young people from poorer homes. They also abolished selection on the grounds of academic ability, not to mention the Government's manifest dislike of the remaining grammar schools. Those were steps on the ladder for bright young people from poor homes.
	Many of those who support top-up fees do so, however reluctantly, because they believe that more money will flow into higher education. Therefore, the most pertinent question for the Minister to answer is: will the Government guarantee that, if they succeed in getting the Bill through Parliament, the full effect of the top-up fees will be truly additional funding? The answer that the fees will go direct to each university will not suffice because the full effect of the tuition fees introduced in the previous Parliament disappeared without trace as the Treasury did not fund the universities in line with the increased numbers of students. The outcome was that the unit funding for students decreased. All that resulted was that the student shared the burden of payment while the Government enjoyed the benefit. I predict that if the Government introduce top-up fees to the value of £3,000, history will repeat itself, and that over time the benefit will not accrue to the universities and the student will be the poorer.
	Reference has been made to an omission in the gracious Speech—that is, the hunting Bill. The right honourable Peter Hain has peddled much distorted information in the media about the history of the Bill in the previous Session, so I hope your Lordships will allow me to put the record straight.
	A Bill was introduced into the House of Commons in December 2002. Note that date because there was a considerable delay before its introduction into this House. The Bill that was introduced in December 2002 would have allowed hunting to continue under a system of regulation. It had the support of the Prime Minister and of the Minister who took it through its stages in the House of Commons. It would have been welcomed by many Members—I believe a majority—of this House.
	The Bill received 81 hours of debate in another place and not until the last hour of Third Reading did the Government Minister accept an amendment from a Back-Bencher, without any warning or explanation, proposing a total ban on hunting, which completely contradicted all that the Minister had been advocating throughout the passage of the Bill.
	When the Bill—which had not in its amended form been through any of its stages in the House of Commons—arrived in this House there was an enormous backlog of parliamentary business. Although an additional day was offered by both my noble friend the Opposition Chief Whip and, indeed, those Peers closely involved with the Bill, it was rejected by the Government. Consequently, the Bill had only 12 hours of debate in this House.
	It is widely rumoured that the Government may support—even advocate—the use of the Parliament Act on the hunting Bill on the back of its reintroduction via the Private Member's Bill procedure. On an issue that is the subject of a free vote on all Benches and which has not found a basis of consensus support inside or outside of the House, and which directly affects the civil liberties and human rights of a significant minority of country people, the use of the Parliament Act would represent a gross abuse of procedure. Anyone who cares about the conventions of our long-standing parliamentary procedures should regard this as a challenge to be resisted.
	However, this Government have little time or regard for the history, conventions and traditions of this or the other place. There is a universally accepted convention that a line in the gracious Speech should state,
	"Other measures will be put before you".
	That line is included to allow the government of the day the flexibility to introduce legislation later in the parliamentary year that had not been foreseen at the outset or in response to an emergency situation. However, the Government introduced the Gender Recognition Bill—not mentioned in the gracious Speech—the very next day. The Bill must have been in print even as the gracious Speech was being made.
	There is also the act of sheer constitutional vandalism when the Government decided to disregard 1,400 years of glorious history by abolishing the post of Lord Chancellor and announcing the setting up of a Supreme Court on the back of a failed ministerial shuffle, without prior discussions with key relevant people, without a Green Paper or a White Paper and, frankly, without even being aware that the post of Lord Chancellor could not be removed without an Act of Parliament.
	Then we had further abuse with the Government's total lack of conscience about breaking an unequivocal pledge made to Parliament by the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, not to remove the elected hereditary Peers until a fully worked through stage two had been completed. However, the Government betray trust with regularity and, sadly, with a casual indifference. Higher education students were promised at the time of the 1997 general election that tuition fees would not be introduced, and at the 2001 general election they were promised that top-up fees would not be introduced. Despite all the stamping of feet and finger wagging over top-up fees by the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues, how can their word ever be taken on trust again?
	Finally, there is the complete distortion, especially by the right honourable Mr Peter Hain, that somehow the hereditary Peers—as he would incorrectly call them—are largely responsible for government defeats in this House. The facts are that of the 88 government defeats in the previous Session, if only two-thirds of the Government's own Members had voted in each of those Divisions, the Government would have won 50 of the 88 Divisions. It is also worth putting on the record that if one removed the hereditary Peers of all Benches from the voting figures on Tuesday evening, the Government would still have lost the vote by a considerable margin.
	Some of us have been puzzled about the nature of the problem that the Government are trying to resolve by their reform proposals. No, the removal of Peers has less to do with a modern agenda or making the House more effective. It is partly politics of envy or a form of class warfare and partly a numbers game. Constitutional change should be undertaken with caution underpinned by a wide basis of popular support. I was deeply saddened but not surprised to hear from a Labour Member of Parliament recently that I should understand that House of Lords reform and the Hunting Bill were about the Prime Minister tossing some red meat to his Back-Benchers. If that is the justification for constitutional change, it is shameful.
	I continue to take comfort from the fact that this House, with its present composition, will take its scrutiny and revising role seriously. By and large in this House, arguments have to be won, no one party is dominant and different alliances of Members come together on the basis of the particular issue before the House. This House has proved over and again its ability to hold the executive to account without fear or favour, always accepting the right of the other place to have the last word. Whatever the outcome of constitutional change, the strength and independence of this second Chamber must be sustained. Today was an excellent example of that. Members on the government Benches have spoken freely and bravely against the Government and Members on my side of the Chamber have spoken freely and bravely against some of the proposals that I will support later in the year.
	I make just one heartfelt plea to the Government—do not alter our procedures in this House to reduce in any way our ability to carry out our core work of holding the executive to account by a process of scrutiny and revision. My noble friends and I stand ready to work constructively with Members on all Benches as we navigate our way through a predictably heavy parliamentary workload. Taking into account the programme of work before us and having read all the debates on the gracious Speech and having listened to many of them, I do not underestimate the task.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, this has been a predictably varied and interesting debate, which reflects the debates that we have had over the full five days on the gracious Speech. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, in being privileged to close not only this debate, but this particular group of debates. We can look back on five days of intense discussions and I believe that we can look forward to robust debate in the days to come. Many noble Lords asked detailed questions on the legislative programme covered by today's debate. I recognise that I might fail to answer all of the substantive points, but I give an assurance that responses will be forthcoming. I begin by paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Rooker for opening today's debate.
	I shall, however, endeavour to cover all of the broad themes. I begin with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, which dealt with the whole range of our debates. She challenged me to address a number of concerns, particularly this morning's Audit Commission report. I believe that the report is to be welcomed. I believe also that it is important that it is read from beginning to end. I do not make any apology for the work we have done to ensure that our schools have the funding that they need for the future and to give them certainty. We have given every local education authority a sufficient revenue grant increase to enable them to passport the schools formula spending increase to schools in full. We have also made £300 million of additional resources available for other local services. I also make no apology for the priority that we have placed on our schools.
	I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on the importance of the balance of funding review which is in progress. I also welcome her comments on constructively thinking through funding issues and our relationships with local government. I believe that we can do much in that sphere and I welcome the Audit Commission's work in that respect.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, also ranged widely in her remarks. In particular, she expressed her disappointment regarding some of the environmental issues that we raised.
	The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, made less of a maiden speech than a second coming, as I think it has been described. I am glad to welcome him back. He made a very important speech and demonstrated his commitment and understanding of environmental issues.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, also made a tour de force by offering a rural perspective on all the Bills that lie before us.
	Some 12 noble Lords spoke on issues of higher education. Two focused particularly on the children's Bill and two referred to our school transport Bill. My noble friend Lord Berkeley asked whether there would be a Bill on transport safety. I am afraid that I have not the faintest idea. I have been unable to ascertain the answer, but I shall, of course, write to him.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, referred to our housing Bill. The noble Baronesses, Lady Byford and Lady Blatch, referred to hunting. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he intends the issue to be resolved in this Parliament. I cannot give any more details. The Government will announce how they intend to proceed when they are ready. Specifically, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that there is no link between the non-appearance of the animal welfare Bill and the hunting Bill. Work is proceeding on the animal welfare Bill.
	Some 11 noble Lords spoke on issues concerning the department of my noble friend Lord Whitty. I shall start by addressing some of the specific concerns raised. My noble friend Lord Hunt spoke about very important climate change issues. Global temperatures have increased in the past 100 years by 0.6 degrees centigrade. Through the UK climate impacts programme we are building a picture of that change. We are also working internationally through important groups such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the intergovernmental group on climate change. I agree with my noble friend on the importance of environmental enterprise. We need to make the most of the opportunities to improve our environmental performance while at the same time improving business competitiveness. I am sure that we will find many opportunities to debate those issues.
	My noble friend was also concerned about air quality. Although we identified particular problems in 2003, the pollution trend is downwards and that is to be welcomed. There is, of course, much more to do.
	The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, talked at length about the issue of wind energy. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister issued a consultation paper to which the noble Lord referred—PPS 22. The planning paper will be published alongside a companion guide containing a technical annexe and good practice guidance which I hope will go some way to addressing the noble Lord's concerns.
	The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, dubbed my noble friend as Lord "Biofuels" Whitty. I have already referred that to my noble friend. I am sure that he will be known as that for a considerable time. The energy White Paper addresses some of those issues. I know that the noble Lord will be in dialogue with my noble friend to pursue those issues.
	The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, were very concerned about the common agricultural policy. I believe that we have made significant strides in that direction. I listened with care to what noble Lords said about the mid-term review and the issues of cross-compliance. Those will be picked up by my noble friend and by those officials working on the matter. They will, of course, be in touch to discuss those issues more fully.
	The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, talked about air traffic pollution and energy issues. I am sure the noble Lord is aware that an aviation White Paper will be issued shortly. I have no further details but I hope that the noble Lord awaits that with great interest.
	The noble Lord, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, with his great knowledge and experience, talked in great detail about vets, as I shall call them. It is good to know that at the present time there is no difficulty in recruiting good quality vets and that there are no particular retention problems, which is very important. However, as the noble Lord will be aware, a report on vets and veterinary services will contribute to the final development of the animal health and welfare strategy. That will be a particularly important contribution. A working group has been promised to look at the issues surrounding that report.
	The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, made many comments on general countryside issues. We believe that through the reforms to the common agricultural policy, the strategy for sustainable food and farming and the development of a refreshed rural strategy, we are beginning to succeed in improving the lives of rural communities and reducing administrative burdens. Notwithstanding noble Lords' concerns about wanting us to be quicker, more effective and so on, I believe that we have begun to make inroads in that regard.
	The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, was concerned about the transportation of live animals. The department has supported the relevant proposals. Indeed, the UK urged the Commission to bring them forward. We want to ensure that existing rules are updated and that enforcement is improved. In some cases, that adopts or builds on good existing UK practice.
	The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the noble Earl, Lord Peel, and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, referred to the review of my noble friend Lord Haskins. We believe that the report is an important piece of work. We have welcomed it, although I believe that parts of it make uncomfortable reading for government departments. There is much to be said for the integrated agency, although, of course, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that she believes there is an ongoing role for the Countryside Agency. We believe that devolution as regards the way in which Defra and its agencies deliver policies to ensure we achieve greater effectiveness and accountability is important. We are working to ensure that we have a complete set of proposals to bring forward. In doing so we endeavour to work closely with colleagues in other agencies. Obviously, that includes the regional development agencies but, not least, the voluntary and community sector. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Peel, would agree that it is important to emphasise that this reform is not an end in itself but a means of delivering improvements on the ground for business, farmers and rural communities.
	In short, the task is to work with our farmers and the whole rural economy to meet the challenges that we have described in order to sustain the quality of our environment and countryside. We look forward to noble Lords' input in that.
	My noble friend Lady Goudie made a succinct intervention on the energy White Paper. I was grateful for what she said about the strategy for the long term. We are rigorously following up the issues in the widely acclaimed energy White Paper. We look forward to further debates on that in your Lordships' House.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, talked about the housing Bill and said that there was much to welcome, for which I am grateful. The Government are committed to the right-to-buy principle but we are concerned in particular about the availability of affordable homes—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. The relevant legislation will focus on park homes and will draw on the report of the park homes working group. That will appear at some point in the not too distant future. During the passage of the legislation there will clearly be much debate on sellers' packs. In our consultation nine out of 10 sellers and purchasers were very keen to see such packs introduced.
	I turn to school transport and the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on rural schools and travelling. It is worth saying that £600 million a year is spent by education authorities on getting one in 10 pupils to school. A third of all pupils are driven to school, and the absence of suitable buses no doubt makes it difficult for some children to participate in after-school activities. Parents, pupils, education authorities and the Churches say that they want us to look at more choice and flexibility. Parents, in particular, are concerned about high fares, bullying, vehicle quality and arrangements that simply do not cater for younger children.
	We believe that now is the time to look for innovation, safer routes and safe crossings, walking buses, secure cycle parking, lockers and bus bays, pedestrian and cycle safety schemes and car sharing. We need to consider the important point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about children and obesity. I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, said about car transport often being the only option, but we need to look at giving children more options than car transport on our roads. That is particularly important for poorer families that do not have access to car transport, which of course creates its own issues.
	We will explore about 20 pilots in total, which will be agreed by the Secretary of State, with about 12 local education authorities—the final figure is to be decided. There will be opportunities to explore what better policies we could have by enabling them to try them on the ground. The issues of rural communities will be very central.
	It is also worth mentioning the work between my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and the Rural Affairs Minister, Alun Michael. They meet regularly and have identified transport as an issue on which they want to work. I am sure that we will be able to do more. Children who live between one and three miles away do not have the facilities, and we could do more to support their transport needs. I look forward to debating the matter in the House, but I hope that there will be some agreement on it.
	I was grateful for many of the supportive remarks made about what we sought to do in the children's Bill. I agree with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about the children's commissioner who must be a champion for children and not merely a response to the lobby groups, important though they are to us all. It is important that such a body is independent of government, reporting on progress against the outcomes for children, particularly the outcomes that in our consultation children told us mattered to them. Those include enjoying and achieving, staying safe and making a positive contribution to society, to name but three.
	We shall look at how we develop the work with local authorities to put in place a director of children's services, mirrored by a lead member. I am glad that that was welcomed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I understand the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, about buck-passing. Part of the reason for that proposal is to say that the buck firmly stops there. Those people are given the responsibility for bringing together the services and rising to that challenge. The enthusiasm that I have seen in addressing the conferences on the Green Paper in the past few weeks demonstrates that that is an important area, although we will need to look very carefully at the detail. I look forward to doing so.
	I was pleased by the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark about the importance of schools, particularly for children who have what might be described as chaotic lifestyles. That brings us to the whole work of extended schools, and the way in which our integrated services need to work.
	I say to my noble friend Lady Massey that I add my congratulations to the all-party group. The work of the children's trust pilots will be important, to see how we involve all agencies including, as she said, those on youth justice issues, which will be an integral part of some of the pilots. Citizenship and education are very important to us. Through the Standards Fund, we support a good number of advanced-skills teachers in citizenship, and help them to support their colleagues. We also support the accreditation of PSHE teaching. At the moment, 750 teachers are going through continuous professional development, and we hope to see that number rise to 3,000.
	The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the childcare workforce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, referred to it, too. I agree with many of the sentiments expressed. There will be a new workforce unit within the department dedicated to working on the issues of retention, recruitment and so on. We have to do more to promote foster parenting, and to give respite care to foster parents. We are looking at that and trying to be imaginative. Recruitment and retention are critical. It is about creating a scaffold to enable people who come in to work with children to move across the profession, advance their professional development, feel that they may start in one area working with children but have many options, and feel that they are part of a professional team.
	It is not about being cost-neutral in what we are describing. We believe that if we integrate so that, for example, children no longer have eight or nine assessments for their disability but merely one, there will be costs to be saved and spent more wisely and better. But we are looking to the spending review, about which, noble Lords will appreciate, I cannot say more.
	Twenty-five million pounds for parenting over three years is important, but it is not the only money. Sure Start did a lot of work on parenting and will continue to do so. Teamwork multi-agencies are critical. The story described by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about a young man who eventually killed himself is one about prevention. It is a story about ensuring that the children we identify under five as already demonstrating what might be called "anti-social behaviour" or as having difficulties in their families do not make the journey that can end up in the criminal justice system. That is the thrust of what we have said in the Green Paper.
	The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked in particular about the retention of social workers. The turnover rate has fallen during the past three years from 15.3 to 12.4 but there is more to do. He asked specifically about Clause 7 of the new asylum Bill. It is straightforward. It does not include any provision for taking children into care. The provision is that local authorities in the United Kingdom have duties to all children living in their areas, including the children of failed asylum seekers.
	A local authority may accommodate, or otherwise look after, a child who is in need. Children are taken into care only when they are suffering, or likely to suffer, harm. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, that the disability Bill will be brought forward by the Department for Work and Pensions and not through the education Bill. I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that no teachers currently on the upper pay scale 2 have been prevented from progressing to pay scale 3 by funding difficulties. The next round of progressions will take place in September 2004 and we are currently in discussion about those issues.
	My noble friend Lord Mitchell talked about e-learning. He is a passionate advocate of that most important issue. We are working towards a unified e-learning strategy, removing barriers at all levels of education for those who want to be involved in it. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark on the 14 to 19 work, he has nothing to fear about the role of religious education. The Pathfinders are in operation. I will send details to the right reverend Prelate and invite him to engage in debate.
	We spent much time in the debate on higher education. I am mindful that during the passage of the Bill we will have many opportunities to debate these issues at great length. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, that high-level schools will be in even greater demand in future. Our predictions are that by 2010, 2 million more graduates will be needed by employers than are needed today. Eighty per cent of jobs created in the decade will require the kind of skills and qualifications that higher education provides. It is the Government's responsibility to respond to that.
	We have clearly set out what we want to do in the three pillars in our higher education strategy. It is accepted on all sides of your Lordships' House that universities need more money. Indeed, most noble Lords who discussed this area of policy referred to that. It is accepted by most noble Lords, although not all, for different reasons that the number of students will continue to grow.
	It is also accepted by most noble Lords that financing needs to come from the taxpayers, but also from those who will benefit from university education. It is the principle behind the work of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. And of course there is a need for fairness within that. Our proposals mean that there will no longer be an entry price into a university of £1,125. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, that students will pay back only when they reach the earning threshold of £15,000-plus.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. That was not my question. My question was: what is the threshold on which the 9 per cent will be based in the salary of the graduate when he or she comes to pay it back? Students will pay 9 per cent of a certain amount. It is not described as "gross income" or "post tax income". It is 9 per cent above a certain threshold and I want to know about that threshold.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness. I will give her some figures in a moment, but if they do not clarify the matter I shall of course write to her. The principle we have determined upon is that university students, as graduates, will pay back only what they owe when they can afford it. I accept what noble Lords have said about bursary schemes and their relevance and importance. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in particular that we continue to work with the coalition of modern universities and others to look at how to make that scheme the most effective. In particular, we recognise that some universities already have high numbers of students from poorer backgrounds.
	I was grateful for the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, has confidence in the Secretary of State. I was interested in his remarks on funding and, in particular, in what he said about priorities. It is perhaps worth saying that we spend £5,300—a different figure from the one given by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—per university student. That compares with £1,800 a year which is spent on the average three year-old and £3,200 on the average primary school pupil.
	The surveys and work carried out on the impact of early years education indicate that it is relevant in breaking the link between a person's social and economic background and his education attainment. We must ensure that we invest in early years learning, too. That is the policy of this party and it is why I am a member of it. Therefore, I say only that governments must make choices about where to invest money for the greatest benefit.
	Noble Lords—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Quirk—rightly pointed out the need to increase the number of applications to universities and to improve the school system. I agree. At present, we spend £4,000 a year on each secondary school pupil and £5,300 on each university student. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord where my priorities should be. I believe that we must ensure, as a government priority, that we have a fair and balanced system for universities.
	That takes us back to the issue raised on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the taxation system. It would not necessarily be our first priority to fund universities directly and wholly through taxation. It is important to ensure that students receive a high-quality education so that they apply to university. The evidence indicates that if they apply, they are given a place. However, they do not apply because they do not always achieve the necessary A-level results and they do not always receive the support that they need in order to do so. That is a critical factor.
	During the lunch break, the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, asked me what would happen if someone died. He asked whether a person would have to leave the debt in his will. The answer is: no; if a person dies, simply and straightforwardly, that is the end of the debt. I am glad to reassure noble Lords on that point.
	I am very grateful for the support that has come from around the House. I am conscious of the time restraint but I want to deal quickly with the issue of the office for fair access and with the concerns expressed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Blatch, about the bureaucracy involved. We are conscious of the need to address that and shall ensure that we do not create bureaucracy or expense. The higher education Better Regulation Review Group has been supportive of our plans thus far. It has said that the value of the principle of good regulation has become clear to the group during its work, notably in considering proposals for the office for fair access. We shall continue to strive to achieve that and, in doing so, we shall take on board comments made by noble Lords.
	The noble Lord, Lord Rix, stated that a third of the money being raised would go into bursaries. We have not made a decision, and I want to make it absolutely clear that we are still holding discussions on that matter. We shall make an announcement in due course. We are still talking to university professors about that.
	I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, that we are very clear that admissions policies and procedures will be outside the remit of an access agreement and the office for fair access. No doubt we shall return to debate that issue.
	In terms of the repayment of fees, I want to make it clear that someone who earns less than £15,000 a year will not pay back anything. At present, as noble Lords know, repayments are made when earnings reach £10,000; at £18,000, a person will pay back £5.19 per week; and, at £30,000, he will pay back £25.96 a week. I consider those to be reasonable amounts in the context of the salaries that people will be earning.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, in relation to the figures that the noble Baroness has just given, does she realise that someone who earns up to £18,000 will never pay off the loan? At present, both the loan and the tuition fees increase by 3.1 per cent each year. That is the neutral level of interest—we know that it is not real-terms interest. If that is the case, a £20,000 loan would increase by £600, which is £12 a week. Therefore, if a person paid £5.19 a week, not only would he never pay off the debt but the debt would continue to rise as he paid. Thus, at the end of each year, he would owe more and not less.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, that does not fit with the figures that I have. To help the noble Baroness I suggest that I place a letter in the Library of the House explaining the figures in detail. As always, the noble Baroness makes a very important point about the longer term. We shall keep this debate in mind and consider what we can do further. My right honourable friend will be interested in it.
	As the noble Baroness is concerned about what happens to graduates, it is worth saying that graduate employability is better than non-graduate employability. Graduate unemployment falls significantly over time. A graduate is half as likely to be unemployed and almost 80 per cent of employed graduates take jobs that make use of their skills. We should not forget that the rates of return to tertiary education are higher in the UK than in any other OECD country. I was asked how we collect loans from graduates who work abroad. The Student Loans Company already does that.
	As my noble friend Lord Desai said, if we do not now get this matter right we shall regret it. I say to my noble friend Lord Puttnam that if I ever live to shuffle down these corridors, whatever else I may regret I shall not regret the higher education Bill which I believe puts universities on the best footing that they have had for a long time. It will ensure that my children, my children's children and the children and grandchildren of other noble Lords will be able to attend well-funded universities that are not crumbling and that have the resources that they need to enable students to make their contribution.
	With gratitude to all noble Lords who have spoken, I commend the Bills to your Lordships' House.
	On Question, Motion, as amended, agreed to nemine dissentiente; the said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lord Chamberlain.

Mersey Tunnels Bill

Brought from the Commons; the declaration of the agent having been deposited pursuant to the resolution of 11th November, the Bill was read a first time.
	House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes before seven o'clock.